
Watch the Rosetta rendezvous - ColinWright
http://rosetta.esa.int/
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InclinedPlane
This is Europe's current "moonshot" class mission. It may not look crazy
interesting yet, but it will be. They'll send a lander down to rest on the
surface of the comet. Then the orbiter and the lander will survey and study
the comet while it gets closer and closer to the sun, transitioning from more
or less a dead rock to a fully active comet with gas jets and a cometary tail.
With any luck they'll find out several new things nobody has even speculated
about comets and collect a couple astoundingly awesome photos in the process.

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gokhan
Make sure you watch "where is Rosetta" animation. Amazing.

[http://sci.esa.int/where_is_rosetta/](http://sci.esa.int/where_is_rosetta/)

Tip: Use your mouse to change the view.

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3rd3
How does one go about finding such a complex trajectory that finally perfectly
aligns with the trajectory of the comet? Trial and error?

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Gravityloss
There have even been trajectory optimization competitions.
[http://sophia.estec.esa.int/gtoc_portal/](http://sophia.estec.esa.int/gtoc_portal/)

Also, there was a crowd-sourcing space game with a nifty javascript interface
for trajectory design where they looked at how people came up with good
trajectories.
[http://sophia.estec.esa.int/thespacegame/game/](http://sophia.estec.esa.int/thespacegame/game/)

It's a fascinating field!

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andyhmltn
Is there anywhere to read up on the theory behind all this stuff? It's always
fascinated me!

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DEinspanjer
About a decade ago, there was a meme where people opened up livejournal blogs
for various space objects. The most popular were the Spirit
(spiritrover.livejournal.com) and Opportunity
(opportunitygrrl.livejournal.com) rovers, but there were several other fun
ones such as the GOES weather satellites (goes-sat.livejournal.com) and Mars 3
(mars3.livejournal.com).

I had a couple of friends who were running some, and they convinced me to open
one up myself. I went digging deep for something a little out of the way and
found Rosetta. I made a few fun posts for it (her) before setting the blog
aside as more mundane priorities took my attention. The posts were a mixture
of information about her background and such as well as long forward thinking
to the day ten years hence when she'd be ready to do her job. And now, here
she is, about to go to it!

It is interesting looking back on some of the spacer journals still archived
out there. Fun times.

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johansch
[https://twitter.com/esaoperations](https://twitter.com/esaoperations) and
[https://twitter.com/ESA_Rosetta](https://twitter.com/ESA_Rosetta) seem quite
up to date.

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JacobIrwin
This page has a meta title tag error: "Rosetta | rendevous..."

R/rendezvous*

Will be tuning in - 1PM PST/Berkeley, CA.

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randallsquared
1AM, I believe.

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thisjepisje
peaking too early.. :P

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KhalilK
typo: rendezvous _

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ColinWright
Fixed here, although it's incorrect on the actual page, so the mods may change
it back to match the page title.

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dang
Anyone who watches HN as closely as you do ought to know that we routinely fix
typos and solecisms.

~~~
ColinWright
Yes and no. I've seen many, many changes that are clearly "right" in some
sense and from some point of view. I've also seen quite a few changes that
I've thought were odd to say the least, and a few that I thought were down-
right perverse.

In short, I freely agree that most of the changes are good. However, there are
some that are, to my thinking, genuinely bad, and I find that I really can't
predict when either will happen.

This engenders a sense of frustration and helplessness, and occasionally that
boils over. My apologies for the tone - please accept it as an indication that
while there are many things that have improved, there is still an underlying
sense that some things are still wrong.

