Sleeping Rosetta Spacecraft Wakes Up for Historic Comet Rendezvous and Landing

space.com ^ | 1-20-14 | Mike Wall

[smokingfrog]

A European probe awoke from a deep sleep Monday (Jan. 20) to gear up for an unprecedented comet rendezvous and landing this year that will cap a 10-year voyage across the solar system.

After two and a half years in hibernation, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft emerged from its slumber while cruising nearly 418 million miles (673 million kilometers) from the sun. The wakeup call, which was due to begin at 5 a.m. EST (1000 GMT), took hours as Rosetta switched on heaters to warm itself after its long night in the cold depths of space.

[smokingfrog]

"We have our comet-chaser back," said Alvaro Giménez, ESA's Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, in a statement. "With Rosetta, we will take comet exploration to a new level."

[smokingfrog]

Hello world!

[Vendome]

My apologies to the universe.

I sent her up there to get her off my back.

I never thought she’d wake up and latch on the first hard thing she could find....

[RightGeek]

[mylife]

I heard about this today.
It is like 500 million miles into space.

[hosepipe]

To do what?

[mylife]

They intend to land it on a comet.

[Jet Jaguar]

Bump

[smokingfrog]

If all goes well, Rosetta will release a piggyback probe toland on the comet in November.

“We shall be on and around the comet to see how it is ‘living’ for more than one year, “ ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain said during a live webcast Monday. “It’s risky, because nobody has done that before, but this is the price to pay to learn about the origin of the solar system and perhaps more of the origin of life.”

[mylife]

In theory comets come from deep deep space and are what delivered water to our forming planet.
The delivered the building blocks of life.

[smokingfrog]

Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration.

[smokingfrog]

That’s what they say.

[mylife]

It is a shame the last one plowed into the sun.

I filmed Hale Bopp in the remotest areas of the desert southwest (Ft Irwin) and then filmed it on night vision.

The length of the tail increased 5 fold on night vision.

I caught a meteor bisecting the tail.
To bad that film is on VHS C.

[mylife]

It is fascinating.

[smokingfrog]

To bad that film is on VHS C

Sounds like it would be worth having converted into a DVD!

[mylife]

Yeah, my friend is curator of the Houston Museum of natural science’s Astronomy dept and she suggested that I send it to NASA.

[caww]

I agree..fascinating for sure. I read about this just today and couldn’t imagine what it was like to be there for these folks. Though I’m not into space thingy’s I do find certain happenings/discoveries interesting.

Still find it amazing we have robots walking on Mars surface....that was fun watching and hard to imagine possible!

[mylife]

These calculations were made decades ago.

You can determine the height of Lunar Mountains using trigonometry and lunar occultations.

I am an idiot, but there are really smart people out there.

[mylife]

I got some real good A10 warthog action from the same deployment ☺

[Squawk 8888]

Space-related, future APOD-fodder pingy thingy.