The Official Space and Astronomy Thread v. Well, this is weird.

[rumborak]

Too many German accents!!!

[BlobVanDam]

Too many German accents!!!

That's spacist!

[Chino]

[hefdaddy42]

This is beyond awesome.

[rumborak]

Wirth all the non-US space news lately (China, Europe, India), it might be time for a little Sputnik feeling here.

[Chino]

Wirth all the non-US space news lately (China, Europe, India), it might be time for a little Sputnik feeling here.

[jasc15]

What's impressive about this mission, to me, is that the probe didn't land on the comet so much as it rendezvoued and docked with it, since there is essentially no gravity.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Here's a n00b question: Is nothing on the mission handled manually by ESA during the trip to the comet or is everything programmed and pre-planned down to the docking with the comet?

[jasc15]

I don't have detailed knowledge of deep space missions, but after launch, the only intervention by ground crew would be course corrections if necessary during key parts of the mission.  For example, this mission was launched 10 years ago, and had 3 Earth gravity assist maneuvers, and one Mars gravity assist maneuver.  As it was approaching these points, I'm sure they were looking very closely at trajectory to make any necessary corrections using the onboard maneuvering thrusters.

Here is a video of the probe's mission trajectory since launch in 2004:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktrtvCvZb28

[rumborak]

The fact that this thing flew for 10 years, and then managed to land on the asteroid, is truly astonishing.

[Orbert]

Absolutely!

Here is a video of the probe's mission trajectory since launch in 2004:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktrtvCvZb28

I took some college calculus and physics, as we all did, and know that there are equations which describe the movements of planets and asteroids and comets and rockets and stuff.  And I know that if you know what you're doing, you can theoretically use these equations to figure out exactly where and when to launch your rocket and what direction to aim it to do everything it's doing in this video.  And even more equations to describe how to build everything, and the materials, and the weight, and how much fuel it'll take, and blah blah blah blah.  (And some equations to figure out what it all costs, but let's not go there.)

But what's really cool is that they actually built it, and did it, and it worked!

[rumborak]

Every time one of these events happens, I spend a ton of time reading about slingshot maneuvers and stuff on Wikipedia
It's just so interesting, because it's so counter-intuitive that it would work.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

I don't have detailed knowledge of deep space missions, but after launch, the only intervention by ground crew would be course corrections if necessary during key parts of the mission.  For example, this mission was launched 10 years ago, and had 3 Earth gravity assist maneuvers, and one Mars gravity assist maneuver.  As it was approaching these points, I'm sure they were looking very closely at trajectory to make any necessary corrections using the onboard maneuvering thrusters.

Here is a video of the probe's mission trajectory since launch in 2004:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktrtvCvZb28

Thx!  That video was fascinating and it makes it look so "easy" pardon the expression. However the equations and math behind that is something I will never understand and it's just so abstract for me that they could plan something like that 10+ years in advance.

Can you imagine the tension in that control room during the final day knowing that they have millions of eyes on them and if something would happen all those years waiting would be for nothing. They must have calculated the procentage of them succeeding with the mission because you don't livestream to the world if you're not fairly certain about the outcome. Although with that said i'm sure they collected lots of interesting data along the way so not everything would be for nothing.

[Xanthul]

Yeah and distances are pretty ginormous out there. I've always been fascinated by representations of the solar system at scale such as this one. The lower right button to travel at the speed of light is particularly amusing.

[Chino]

That site is awesome.

[Chino]

https://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/11/12/philae-probe-makes-comet-landing/

Favorite comment:

"I'm a hard core scientist and sadly, I do not believe this is really happening. There is no GPS in space, chasing this small rock for 10 years and catching it is impossible. Think about the complexity of the GPS system, 24 atomic clock satellites circling the Earth, so we can find a Walmart within 30 feet, and they expect us to believe they landed something the size of a washing machine, on a comet traveling at 84,000 MPH. I just don't believe it, I truly wish I did. It's all about money anymore."

[jasc15]

Apparently, they originally intended on landing on a different comet, but the launch was delayed due to problems with the launch vehicle at the time.  What a pain in the ass it must have been to figure out a whole new set of trajectories for this new comet.  I'm sure they had these figured in advance though, and could select a plan B if they couldn't launch in time for plan A.  This is why the spacecraft needed to go into hibernation mode for a few years, since this trip was much longer than originally planned.

Learned all this from the PBS special:
https://video.pbs.org/video/2365367186/

Chino, I'm trying hard not to correlate that comment with the website it was posted on.

[Chino]

Chino, I'm trying hard not to correlate that comment with the website it was posted on.

 

I only go to Fox News to read comments like that.

[Orbert]

He can be a scientist and still be a moron.  Why does he focus so much on GPS?  We didn't have GPS when we sent guys to the moon over 40 years ago.  Oh yeah, he probably doesn't believe we did that, either.

[Xanthul]

I think he's trolling / joking. At least that's what I want to believe.

[Chino]

Bored at work. Please share.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Recreation of the Rosetta mission in KSP:

https://youtu.be/GlMRKKLGWlU

Good stuff! 

[rumborak]

He can be a scientist and still be a moron.  Why does he focus so much on GPS?  We didn't have GPS when we sent guys to the moon over 40 years ago.  Oh yeah, he probably doesn't believe we did that, either.

He isn't just a scientist. He's a "hardcore scientist" as he says. That's like, you can't even fathom his level of understanding. Like, totally, mind, blown.

[adace]

The color of Jupiter's Great Red Spot explained and intense storms on Uranus. Fascinating stuff!
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141112133207.htm

https://www.space.com/27770-extreme-uranus-storms-puzzle-astronomers.html

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Some epic footage of the Antares rocket fail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsvUVDTgPoI

I love looking at how the blast wave affects the surrounding area. You get a better perspective of the amount of force involved in the blast.

That water tower held up to the blast nicely.  Whoever built it needs to build the next rocket

[Chino]

That video is strangely satisfying.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Yea I know right. Love the shot when the lense breaks.

[Chino]

So today is the launch of the new Delta IV rocket. It  was supposed to launch an hour ago but got delayed due to winds. I'm amazed by how much smaller it is than the Saturn V. I get that the volume of the three tanks is probably closer than its height is, but still.

[Implode]

Space is happening right now, and it's neat.

By that I mean the Orion is on its first test flight right now. It's about to reach its peak "height" from the surface at 3600 miles before descending to splash down in the Pacific, west of Mexico.

[BlobVanDam]

I caught it just after the launch (which apparently stopped streaming right as it launched). The live feed of it orbiting Earth was a sight.
I can't wait until they're actually doing manned missions with it, although that's still years off.

[Chino]

It kind of bums me out that in the 60's we decided to go to the moon and did it more or less from scratch in less than ten years. We have made so much progress since then and a manned Mars mission is still twenty years away. I understand fully that Mars is no easy feat, but if we put the resources into Mars that we did to the moon, we could easily do it in ten years.

[BlobVanDam]

It kind of bums me out that in the 60's we decided to go to the moon and did it more or less from scratch in less than ten years. We have made so much progress since then and a manned Mars mission is still twenty years away. I understand fully that Mars is no easy feat, but if we put the resources into Mars that we did to the moon, we could easily do it in ten years.

What bums me out is that in the late 60s and early 70s, man went to the moon several times with a great success rate, and anyone at the time would have thought that by 2014 going to the moon would be a cakewalk. Yet we haven't returned since something like 1972. I get that there's only so much you can learn from going to the same place again, but with what we've learned from the ISS about long term living in space, you'd think some kind of moon colony would be the next logical step.

I am thrilled that going to Mars is the ultimate goal of the Orion project, but at the same time, it seems like it's just a crazy pipe dream at this point that keeps getting pushed back. It would be doable if the resources were there, but I don't think that's going to happen. They pushed a lot harder to get to the moon back in the 1960s. These days it's very slow going.

Think about it, anyone under the age of 40 or so has never even seen man land on the moon in their lifetime. I think it could be as big an event now for NASA as it was back then, especially with the technology of today, live streaming the whole thing over the internet. And getting to Mars is going to be absolutely huge.
Don't get me wrong, landing a rover on Mars is still a damn impressive feat, but it doesn't quite capture the imagination like seeing a living breathing person land on a different rock.

[jasc15]

I'm pretty excited about this launch, but it's tempered by the fact that Orion won't have another test flight for 4 more years.  If this were Apollo, today's flight would be repeated in 2 months with a crew on board, and 10 more mission objectives.  Granted, Apollo took on a lot of risk, and it's amazing that more didn't go wrong, but we are much more risk averse today (whether that's good or bad is hard to say).

Also, apparently it's harder to stream video than launch a rocket.  I was watching the live feed this morning, when the streaming crapped out at 15 seconds to launch.  I didnt get it back until 5 minutes later.

[Chino]

It kind of bums me out that in the 60's we decided to go to the moon and did it more or less from scratch in less than ten years. We have made so much progress since then and a manned Mars mission is still twenty years away. I understand fully that Mars is no easy feat, but if we put the resources into Mars that we did to the moon, we could easily do it in ten years.

Think about it, anyone under the age of 40 or so has never even seen man land on the moon in their lifetime. I think it could be as big an event now for NASA as it was back then, especially with the technology of today, live streaming the whole thing over the internet. And getting to Mars is going to be absolutely huge.
Don't get me wrong, landing a rover on Mars is still a damn impressive feat, but it doesn't quite capture the imagination like seeing a living breathing person land on a different rock.

I sadly don't think it would be that big of a deal to a lot of people. Just browsing the Fox News comments, and sites like Free Republic, it's clear that a good 1/3 of this country thinks it's a complete waste of time and money.

[Azyiu]

Yep, and after reading this article, I too wonder IF (not when) we will get the funding and support to actually land on Mars.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/05/nasa-orion-launch-space-startup