Updates in this Newsletter- The Ups and Downs of Landing on a Comet
- 5 weeks until xmas! Great gifts here!
- Orion's Splendour
* The Ups and Downs of Landing on a Comet
Last week, the Rosetta spacecraft, which has been orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for the past few months, deployed its Philae lander to actually land on the comet!
And it was successful! Sort of..
Information is still coming in, but it appears that:
* The harpoons did not fire, so the lander could not secure itself to the surface
* Due to the extremely low gravity on the Comet (the lander weighs the equivalent of 10g!), Philae bounced (up to 1km in the air!) and landed again in a different spot
* It bounced a second time, ending up on its side, where it has remained.
Contact with Rosetta was established, and data has been sent back. However the bad news is that because the lander is on its side, and apparently in an area with high rocks, sunlight is not reaching the solar panels of the lander, so the batteries are draining.
They have attempted to spin the lander a little more upright, and deploy the drills, but it has since depleted its battery power and has gone into hibernation mode.
We're still waiting to hear more, but there's still a chance it will wake up again as the comet spins and gets more sunlight at different angles.
Phil Plait as always has excellent summaries and information, so it's worth following his blog for more too.
It's been an amazing few days of news about the comet, and the mission has been a success already. What a remarkable achievement by the ESA team.
* 5 weeks until xmas! Great gifts here!
Only 5 weeks until Xmas! Still wondering what to get your brother, mum and dad, long lost cousin, or the works colleagues for the secret santa?
The
IceInSpace Calendars are a great gift idea, and great value - especially if you order 2 or more, and even better value if you use the coupon code 10PCTNEWS which gives you an
extra 10% off.
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Order online at the
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* Orion's Splendour
This incredibly deep image of the Orion and Horsehead nebula and surrounds was an
APOD last week.
From APOD:
"The constellation of Orion holds much more than three stars in a row. A deep exposure shows everything from dark nebulae to star clusters, all embedded in an extended patch of gaseous wisps in the greater Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The brightest three stars on the far left are indeed the famous three stars that make up the belt of Orion. Just below Alnitak, the lowest of the three belt stars, is the Flame Nebula, glowing with excited hydrogen gas and immersed in filaments of dark brown dust. Below and left of the frame center and just to the right of Alnitak lies the Horsehead Nebula, a dark indentation of dense dust that has perhaps the most recognized nebular shapes on the sky. On the upper right lies M42, the Orion Nebula, an energetic caldron of tumultuous gas, visible to the unaided eye, that is giving birth to a new open cluster of stars. Immediately to the left of M42 is a prominent bluish reflection nebula sometimes called the Running Man that houses many bright blue stars. The featured image covers an area with objects that are roughly 1,500 light years away and spans about 75 light years."
Thanks for reading! Keep looking up!
