It’s a mission that’s been more than ten years in the making, but later tonight, at approximately 11:35pm PST, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta space probe will reach the end of its four-billion-mile journey and attempt to land on a comet. If it succeeds, it will be the first spacecraft in history to do so.
Back in early August, the probe arrived at the orbit of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and has been studying it for the past couple months as it prepares to land. The ESA estimates that the rock is roughly 20 trillion pounds, and 2.5 miles wide at its broadest point. In terms of shape, observers have likened 67P to a misshapen dumbbell or rubber duck. Up until recently, the ESA couldn’t get a clear enough view of the oddly-shaped rock to figure out where to land, but now that Rosetta is up close and personal, they’ve scoped out a good spot.
Just before midnight tonight, Rosetta will release a 220-pound lander craft called Philae, which will begin a slow, 13-mile descent to a relatively flat section located near the “duck’s” head. Once it reaches the comet’s surface, Philae will blast a harpoon into the rock, anchoring itself and preventing the craft from drifting away. After it’s secured to the rock, the craft will deploy a small drill to collect samples and analyze the chemical composition of the comet’s surface.
All the data Philae collects during this process will be relayed back to Rosetta via radio signals, which will then be bounced back to Earth, taking about 6 hours to reach us even at the speed of light. The lander craft will continue to gather data until March, when the comet gets so close to the sun that the ESA predicts Philae’s instruments will stop working. It could happen sooner, too. Dust might accumulate on Philae’s solar panels, and choke out its power supply.
But that’s not likely to happen for a few more months — assuming the landing goes as planned. In the meantime, you can check out the ESA’s livestream of the Rosetta mission up above.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.