Landing on a comet!

[tech_diver]

Attention space geeks...

Something amazing is going on that is largely unreported in the media.

In about 20 minutes a probe will attempt to land on a comet. The data we're already getting is pretty awesome as we've never gotten this close to a comet before.

No one really knows what we will find. Some people believe that the first water and organic molecules may have arrived on our planet via comet. (Personally, I don't think any previous hard data supports this, but no one knows for sure. The thing could be crawling with space worms.)

Live feed:
Rosetta | rendezvous with a comet


Some may question the use of all the money the ten year journey to the comet cost. I can understand this as the origins of life may have little meaning to day to day life.

Even if you don't care about the beginning of life on Earth, you can rationalize that if our planet is ever threatened by a comet strike, what we learn here could help us blow up a rogue comet headed our way, just like they do in the movies.

Hey if you're not into science you can probably get into big budget action flicks.

 

[oszillodrom]

For people who think space exploration is incredibly expensive: the decade-long Rosetta mission cost every European 3.50€, while a ticket for Interstellar is 8.50€.

P.S. I'm proud that Austria was part of this, a friend of mine actually helped design one of the instruments on Rosetta.

---------- Post added November 12th, 2014 at 07:39 PM ----------

Another statistic: one of our banks crashed. With the money that we lost, the small nation of Austria could have carried out 13 Rosetta missions.

 

[DandyDon]

It was a great accomplishment, and the news is covering it. It's unfortunate that the lander ended up in a shadow, but the risks were known. Still, nice job with rewards even if not obvious.

 

[Knight_of_Avalon]

Very impressive accomplishment - we're one step closer to asteroid mining. And NASA's planning a mission to try to redirect an asteroid . . . just in case.