
Rosetta comet landing – live stream - fla
http://rosetta.esa.int/?landing
======
sidcool
Updates: (Animation of where Rosetta is :
[http://sci.esa.int/where_is_rosetta/](http://sci.esa.int/where_is_rosetta/))

1\. Comet is warmer than expected, estimating presence of dust.

2\. Comet has Ammonia based gases in atmosphere and Magnesium in the soil.
There is water in small amounts.

3\. The gravity is one ten thousandth of that of earth.

4\. NASA has a few instrument mounted on Rosetta. The microwave instruments,
plasma instruments and Electron analyzer.

5\. The landing site has clearly been identified. Rosetta will send 5 high-res
images every hour. There were some minor hiccups last night.

6\. Many high profile science experiments will be conducted during the first
48 hours after landing. This will be followed by the long term experiments
whose results will take time.

7\. Rosetta has executed a successful separation phase. The team is ecstatic
:)

8\. Team has lost contact with the lander, but the spokesman said this was
expected and the contact will soon be reestablished.

9\. It will be few hours before some new updates.

~~~
aruggirello
> NASA has a few instrument mounted on Rosetta. The microwave instruments,
> plasma instruments and Electron analyzer.

Which instruments are mounted on Philae?

~~~
mikeyouse
The Wiki article is pretty detailed:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philae_(spacecraft)#Instruments](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philae_\(spacecraft\)#Instruments)

------
svckr
Here's _the real_ live stream:
[https://xkcd.com/1446/](https://xkcd.com/1446/)

~~~
mikeyouse
ESA lists 35min to lander separation, Randall lists 65.. I'll definitely keep
both windows open, but it sure seems like the ESA site might be quicker on
updates for live events!

~~~
logicallee
>I'll definitely keep both windows open, but it sure seems like the ESA site
might be quicker on updates for live events!

This is so hilarious. For up to the minute information, it's a toss-up between
the European Space Agency's _live_ stream on the probe it's landing on a
comet, and... a hand-drawn web comic about it.

~~~
Gravityloss
ESA's PR is not very good. They have mostly talking heads while Randall Munroe
actually provides a good overview on what's happening now and what's going to
happen next.

When humanity landed on Titan (which is a mind boggling achievement), the
pictures couldn't be shown right away because they had to have some politician
talking some platitudes first.

NASA does it infinitely better.

~~~
vixen99
Not only 'infinitely' but presumably a 'quantum leap' better?

~~~
Gravityloss
light years ahead...

I actually liked that they interviewed the actual people who had done stuff
with it. I just wished there was a bit more context graphics.

------
frabcus
The pins puncturing the cold-gas jet system on Philae have apparently failed -
which will make it harder to stay on the surface.

[http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-
lakdawalla/2014/1111232...](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-
lakdawalla/2014/11112320-philae-update-go-for.html)

Still has two harpoons and ice screws!

~~~
aruggirello
There is a possibility the pins actually worked. I think they are going to
attempt to fire the thruster anyway.

~~~
jdiez17
Some scientists believe the it might be the pressure sensors that have failed
instead of the cold gas system itself. It's not an unanimous opinion though.
Well, we'll see.

------
kkitay
Philae landing confirmed—receiving data—"harpoon fired and rewound".

~~~
dedene
Touchdown:
[https://twitter.com/ESA_Rosetta/status/532565327721545728](https://twitter.com/ESA_Rosetta/status/532565327721545728)

------
Sami_Lehtinen
Is it just me, or do you find it silly that ESA live stream shows Jessie J
advertising. I find it rather strange, but maybe they're just so cash
deprived. Hmm? Maybe corporate executive investor dashboard should also show
random high end product ads? Would it be a good or bad idea? - Maybe the
mission failed, and they thought that showing music videos instead of
something bad would be cool. Isn't that great idea for future space missions?
Let's show "cool" music videos, if things go bad. So people can just be happy
and don't need to worry or care what happened.

~~~
3rd3
I wouldn’t mind it if it wasn’t produced so badly and wasn’t played in a
continuous loop.

------
Cowicide
I just now watched their reaction after the successful separation where it's
now on its way to landing on the comet. Very cool, thanks for posting this!
The video stream was flawless, by the way, with great quality audio and video.
Apple and others should learn from them how to do streaming right.

------
joering2
Can someone actually explain me how is it possible to even rendezvous with an
object that moves so fast and is so violent? I mean, this is not a Moon
orbiting a Planet, but rather a very violent object storming through the
Universe.

~~~
Sharlin
The 67P is a short-period comet. Its orbit is quite elliptical, yes, but
nowhere near as elliptical as those of long-period comets, arriving from the
Kuiper belt or even farther from the freezing outer reaches of the Solar
System.

Consequently, its velocity, even near perihelion, is not _that_ high, and
matching orbits with it is, while not trivial, not hopelessly hard either.
That said, Rosetta _did_ spend 10 years in space and needed multiple gravity
assist maneuvers in order to finally rendezvous with the comet. Still, the
circuitous route was more about fuel economy than any fundamental difficulty
with reaching its destination.

~~~
angdis
What I would like to know is how did ESA calculate the trajectory that Rosetta
needed to take to meet up with the planets for the purpose of gravity-assist
maneuvers? I mean this was a 10 year journey, is there any way to make
corrections to the trajectory? How much room for error is there?

~~~
Sharlin
With smart minds, Newtonian mechanics, numerical methods, and some computer
time. The path was complex, mut not much moreso than eg. MESSENGER's seven-
year journey to Mercury. Space probes usually do a couple of course
corrections burns en route, but the margin of error is pretty small.
Fortunately, orbital mechanics is highly predictable at human time scales even
though n-body systems are quite chaotic in the long term. If the launch
vehicle puts you straight on the calculated trajectory you can be pretty damn
sure you'll be on the right path even ten years from now.

------
makeusz
In the meantime:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H08tGjXNHO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H08tGjXNHO4)
(Ambition the film)

------
franzb
Am I the only one noticing, and wondering, why the operations center is nearly
empty? Lunch time?

~~~
mkempe
The Europeans don't pretend that "mission control" actually controls the
current, live sequence of events?

~~~
franzb
I'm European myself. I understand that the one-hour roundtrip doesn't quite
allow for quick interventions, still I would expect operations people to be
there "just in case", or at least to monitor the (I presume) continuous down
stream... I find that there's a striking lack of activity in that room :)

------
tempodox
Yes! This is the kind of news for HN :) We should have something like this
every month or so.

------
hughes
The live chat in ##cometlanding on irc.freenode.net is pretty good.

------
welshguy
It's down. Harpoons fired. Telemetry active.

~~~
louhike
Unfortunatly, the harpoons did not. But the lander seems ok. The mission
control is trying to find a way to fire the harpoons.

~~~
welshguy
I know, even though they said they had fired and the cable had rewound, to
draw the lander in closer. They've shut down media and comms until tomorrow at
this point. I'm getting a bit worried now.

------
flexie
Landed!!! Awesome :-)

------
fabriceleal
Ah, the pictures here
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/sets/72157...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/sets/72157638315605535/)
remind me of Eraserhead :)

------
edgartheunready
Must be watched while listening to this on repeat:
[https://soundcloud.com/fauzkhan/hanszimmerinterstellardayone...](https://soundcloud.com/fauzkhan/hanszimmerinterstellardayonedark)

------
edgartheunready
Must be watched with this on repeat:
[https://soundcloud.com/fauzkhan/hanszimmerinterstellardayone...](https://soundcloud.com/fauzkhan/hanszimmerinterstellardayonedark)

------
car
The DLR telemetry page, for the technical inclined:
[http://www.musc.dlr.de/philae/telemetrie.html](http://www.musc.dlr.de/philae/telemetrie.html)

------
Icybee
Is it just me, or does it keep buffering for anyone else?

~~~
superkuh
On some linux configurations flash 11.x doesn't seem to work with livestream.
A handful of seconds play then it permanently buffers. One solution is to use
the python program livestreamer
([http://livestreamer.tanuki.se/en/latest/index.html](http://livestreamer.tanuki.se/en/latest/index.html))
to play the stream in vlc.

~~~
dingaling
Great tool, thanks for the heads-up!

For Ubuntu one needs to install the GetDebs PPA:

[http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/ppa/getdeb_apps?dist=trusty](http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/ppa/getdeb_apps?dist=trusty)

or build from source

~~~
spindritf
Livestreamer is in the normal universe repo.

~~~
wpietri
Not in 14.04 LTS. Looks like they added it in 14.10.

------
donmb
Does anyone know where exactly Tschuri is right now in our solar system?
Couldn't find any map or sth that illustrates that.

~~~
8ig8
This was linked earlier:

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

------
nsxwolf
Is there actual video of the landing? I'm still just seeing talking heads on
the live stream. Did I miss it?

~~~
imdsm
I don't believe so, not so far anyway, that'd be a technical feat itself.

~~~
viewer5
How come? It's just a stream of images, right? Though the power cost of
transmission might be high, I guess; I don't know how these things work.

~~~
Brakenshire
They've only sent back two images so far, I think we can assume that the
bandwidth of the signal is very low, at that distance. At the moment it's
better to use it for sending data than pictures. Perhaps they will have stored
something like that locally, and can transmit them later.

------
fla
Landed !

------
moioci
new meaning for separation anxiety.

------
5414h
i think its going to explode

------
toblender
They should play some music.

I'm watching this with pop music in the background, and it's way less tense...

