Friday, November 14, 2014

Europeans Land First Spacecraft On Comet



Guess What! The ESA (European Space Association) launched the Philae back in 2004 and it took many years to reach the comet.On its way it traveled a amazing 4 billion miles. It succesfuly landed on the comet on wednesday of this week. Members describe that the mood at the headquarters was euphoric. Unfortunately, the mission didn't go exactly as planned but there still is a chance. There are two problems.

The first one is that only 3 out of the four legs succesfuly attached on the comet apparently the harpoon on the 4th one was activated but not fired. The Comet was discovered back in 1969 and its called 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko the comet is racing toward the sun at 18 km per second.

The second problem is that the battery life is a bit too low. The spacecraft receives 1.5 hours of sunlight every 12 hours.The team says that this is not enough for a long term period. Team member, Paolo Ferri The head of operation in the headquarters says "We have estimations right now that go between Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon,". He means that between Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon the battery will run out.

My opinion is that this is very awesome and it will remain in history forever just like USA was the first country to succesfuly land and walk on the moon.


I will put some pictures

Here is the comet.     


   
This is a diagram that explain some thing where it landed etc... This is a bigger picture of the lander it is way smaller in real life though


landing location

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