Hats off to the team who made this work with the available power budget, considering the spacecraft was not really designed to go out that far away from the sun.
Both Rosetta and Philae would have been an excellent use case for nuclear batteries, which would have allowed the lander to send data back for decades. Granted, most of the science data can probably be gathered within the window we have now, but it would have been nice to have a longer-term sensor up there.
> Scientists hope that Philae and its 10 instruments will conduct 64 hours of work before its batteries drain.
I'd figured with all the effort to get it out there that it'd be set up to ride the comet down and give us a first-person view of what happens as it loops around the sun.
I love how the tail, or at least the coma is already projecting into space. I believe it's as far as Jupiter, but the most volatile components must be starting to vaporize.
The spectacle as it gets near the Sun will be gorgeus. And so it could be watching the tail slowy snowing again on the rock.
I wonder if it will break. Other comets are known to fragment in the hottest point. The "duck" shape suggest that's possible, but the perihelium is even longer than Earth's.
[+] [-] Udo|11 years ago|reply
Both Rosetta and Philae would have been an excellent use case for nuclear batteries, which would have allowed the lander to send data back for decades. Granted, most of the science data can probably be gathered within the window we have now, but it would have been nice to have a longer-term sensor up there.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|11 years ago|reply
> Scientists hope that Philae and its 10 instruments will conduct 64 hours of work before its batteries drain.
I'd figured with all the effort to get it out there that it'd be set up to ride the comet down and give us a first-person view of what happens as it loops around the sun.
Such a pity.
[+] [-] IndianAstronaut|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kitd|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] narag|11 years ago|reply
The spectacle as it gets near the Sun will be gorgeus. And so it could be watching the tail slowy snowing again on the rock.
I wonder if it will break. Other comets are known to fragment in the hottest point. The "duck" shape suggest that's possible, but the perihelium is even longer than Earth's.
[+] [-] lisper|11 years ago|reply
"At this distance, the image resolution is 84.6 cm/pixel"
That means that if there was a human walking around down there, you could see her (barely, but you could). A car would be clearly visible.