Rosetta edges towards Comet 67P

[Jonk]

Anyone else keeping an eye on this??

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28146472

I'm very very interested to see this experiment become a successful one.

[Laurie61]

Yes, have been keeping an eye on progress since the first big burn  am looking forward to the Philae lander attempt.

[Jonk]

Ah good...I'm not alone then!

[psjshep]

not alone..... this could end up being monumentous...

[AstroJon]

Looks like this might just get a lot more interesting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27110882

It appears it is actually a double comet.

[DaveGarland]

How cool is that! They now have to work out the best place to try to land. In the last picture the comet seems to look like a boot to me. How cool would it be to land on what would be the top of the foot so they could see the view up the shin like a huge cliff.

[AstroJon]

I agree, although landing is much more difficult there are so many more opportunies to learn.

[Jonk]

I thought the recent images they sent back were brilliant. Like a very deformed moon.

Lots of craters and detail and I am really looking forwards to the landing, Should be a great achievement.

[Jussi]

No room for Dirty Snowballs ..

[Algieba]

Can't wait until 12th November!

[Laurie61]

Not long now, S@N are doing a live show on the night    

“Rosetta is less than 10 km from a comet, and both are racing through space at over 60 000 km/h,” says Matt Taylor, ESA’s Rosetta project scientist.

“Next month, we’ll be attempting to land on the comet, and with our orbiting spacecraft, we’ll continue to keep pace with the comet for another year or more, watching how it evolves over time.

“All of this is new and unique and has never been done before. It may sound like science fiction, but it’s a reality for the teams that have dedicated their entire lives to this mission, driven to push the boundaries of our technology for the benefit of science and to seek answers to the biggest questions regarding our Solar System’s origins.”

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_the_ambition_to_turn_science_fiction_into_science_fact

[Laurie61]

A quick up date 

Rosetta comet mission: Landing site named 'Agilkia'

The landing site on a comet to be targeted by Europe's Philae robot on 12 November has been named "Agilkia" following a public competition.

The new name - Agilkia - refers to a patch of high ground in the Nile River south of Egypt.

It continues the Egyptian theme for the mission. 

Philae will be ejected towards Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by its carrier spacecraft, Rosetta, on the morning of 12 November.

Controllers at the European Space Agency's operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany, hope to get a positive signal from the robot at just after 1600 GMT (1700 CET). 

Rosetta will be some 580 million km from Earth when it drops the piggybacked Philae over the comet.

The descent is expected to take about seven hours.

[astronymonkey]

You can see what esa plan to show on their web tv channel here http://www.esa.int/esatv/Television which gives timings for the different stages of separation, landing etc.

Cheers

[Jussi]