Thoughts, ramblings and other stuff

The last week in life of Philae lander was full of danger and excitement. I was waiting with this post until we know more about its ultimate fate and not as good as we hoped but not as bad as it seemed for a while. It did land, it's still on the comet and it sent a lot of useful data but for now it's in hibernation and it may never wake up.

It all started very well - perfectly documented in the xkcd comic of the day (here's frame by frame version). Philae landed perfectly on the chosen spot. I managed to time my day perfectly to be able to see the moment of landing. I wasn't the only one watching - comet landing was trending everywhere and people were pretty positive about it. I remember how happy and relieved they were in mission control - dropping the mike and everything - when it turned out the Philae landed. Then I returned to work and when I looked at it again the news weren't as good. But the harpoons didn't fire and Philae jumped and then jumped again. For next day everyone was worrying if it'd even be able to stick to the comet. This is how its jumps looked from Rosetta.


Eventually it stopped moving and was still on the comet. Unfortunately, it stopped in the shadow of a cliff and only gets 1.5 hours of sunlight per 12 hour comet day. This meant its batteries weren't able to recharge and the scientists scrambled to get it to sent as much data as possible before the battery died. They also risked detaching from the comet just before battery run out to get at least result from one drilling (hoping that if it make it jump again the next site might get more sunshine). That didn't happen but they managed to rotate the bigger solar panel to the sunny spot. Maybe once the comet gets closer the sun the battery would get enough charge again. But for now Philae sleeps.

But we did land on a comet in a mission that took 10 years and were only off by few tiny jumps. And we have stunning pictures from the surface of the comet and Philae sent the results from the landing and subsequent test. Just today it was announced that there is proof of carry organic compounds and they could've seeded Earth with them. And of course Rosetta mission continues as the probe travels with the comet towards the sun it will sample and analyse the gases and dust coming out of 67P.

The Rosetta mission sent the probe towards comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko more than five times Earth’s distance from the Sun. The Rosetta orbiter will rendezvous with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and remain in close proximity to the icy nucleus as it plunges towards the warmer inner reaches of the Sun’s domain. At the same time, a small lander will be released onto the surface of this mysterious cosmic iceberg.


Rosetta has reached it's destination earlier this year and now it's preparing to land Philae lander on it in two weeks. And it's not easy as Alexander Gerst shows in space:


The short film directed by Tomek Bagiński I mentioned a week ago is also about this mission

It really makes me wish he did make Jacek Dukaj's Ruch Generała (General's Move) into a film. This would be a perfect look for it.

I promise this is the last science one for now.

We finally had clear skies here. Just in time for me to see the PANSTARRS comet. Yesterday when it was nice and warm I just watched with my eyes (barely visible smudge with brighter dot at the end if you know where to look). Today I took my camera and tried to take a picture. It's very grainy because I don't have a real telescopic lens (11x is all I normally need but this would've been better with something more) and the comet is very faint and contrast is poor as it's just where the colour changes between day and night and it disappears below tree line before it gets really dark (my first photo was way overexposed). So this is the best I could do but here it is:


Within one year I saw solar eclipse, transit of Venus and now a comet (the last 2 for the first time in my life). By the end of this year there might be another, much, much brighter comet coming so I'm hoping for something even more awesome.