For the griff
Someday, we will all look back to these past few weeks and say, “I was there.”
A few of us will actually be telling the
truth. The rest will only wish they had been paying attention to what,
simply put, is the most bad-ass and amazing thing our collective species
has achieved since Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon.
I’m talking about the Rosetta mission,
the greatest mission most of you had not heard about until last week,
when it launched a lander called Philae that managed
to survive a landing on the surface of the comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
The comet is orbiting the sun at an average speed of 135,000 kilometres
per hour.
At that speed, the comet could circle the Earth three times in one hour.
Philae survived its landing and was able
to conduct almost all of its scientific experiments in spite of having
several of its landing systems fail, and bouncing off the surface of the
comet up over one kilometre into the sky, only to land again and bounce
a second time and land on the side of a cliff.
It powered down because it was unable to get enough sunlight to recharge its batteries – the comet itself is as black as coal.
When Churyumov-Gerasimenko makes its turn
around the sun, the lander may in fact get a second burst of energy,
resulting in more delicious, juicy science. According to the European
Space Agency, we already know that the very thin atmosphere surrounding
the nucleus of the comet contains organic compounds, which could mean
anything from methane gas to amino acids: the building blocks of the
proteins we are made of.
This may strengthen the theory that the building blocks for life came from somewhere other than Earth.
This is the latest feat in a long history
of historic firsts in space exploration that has marked the Rosetta
mission. This is a good ship. The Rosetta is built with ten rockets: six
for propulsion and four to slow down, and was clocked by the ESA at
48,024 km/h at one point.
To reach Churyumov-Gerasimenko is to
cover a mind-blowing distance of over 6.4 billion kilometres over almost
10 years. I’m not even going to attempt to come up with a metaphor for
that. Let’s just say it’s a bloody long drive.
To achieve this, the Rosetta combined its
six rocket thrusters with a classic trick of the space robot trade,
known as the slingshot effect – made famous by saving the Apollo 13
mission. The slingshot effect is buzzing close to a large body and using
its gravitational pull to throw oneself out of orbit. Chances are in
the future we will be using this as the main means to get around the
solar system.
Rosetta did this not once, not twice, but seven times.
Three times with large asteroids, three
times around the earth, during one of which a group of primitive
hominids mistook the ship for a meteor in danger of striking the Earth
maneuver and a kobayashi-maru around Mars where Rosetta was unable to
use its solar panels to power its internal systems while it was in a
very low orbit.
In the end, Rosetta had to power itself using the lander’s battery, something it was not supposed to be able to do, and flew blind.
It made it through, and even took some photos of Mars while it was at it.
Rosetta is a beast.
Not only that, but according to the ESA,
the payoff for the $1.8 billion mission is huge. Rosetta has employed
over 2,000 people in 10 years. Not a huge number until you remember
these are 2,000 engineers. Now that’s economic growth.
We should also consider Rosetta’s solar
panels. New ESA solar panel technology, called Low-intensity Low
Temperature Cells, enabled Rosetta to be the first spacecraft to travel
past the asteroid belt using solar power alone.
This thing is several hundred million
miles away from the sun, and it’s drawing a charge off its light.
Imagine what that could do on Earth?
Hell, if we can keep building hardcore spacecraft like this, it won’t be much longer until we’re walking on Mars.
No comments:
Post a Comment