• Question: what do you think about the landing on the comet?

    Asked by E_kelleher to Francesca, Laura, Matthew, Andrew, Rebecca on 16 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Matthew Camilleri

      Matthew Camilleri answered on 16 Nov 2014:

      Its amazing, especially considering that this mission has been ongoing for the last ten years. I can also say that it has been a highly unlucky story, seeing that it landed in shade and therefore it cannot be powered up by the sun. Lets hope that as time goes by the comet starts facing the sun and it can be powered up again.

    • Photo: Laura Schofield

      Laura Schofield answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      I think it is incredible! I was glued to the internet when it was due to land and I had my fingers crossed the whole time!!! It is incredibly sad that the battery has died, but as Matthew said, it may be powered up again which would be awesome. It did take some amazing photos and it even managed to take some samples and analyse them before the battery went flat, but to be honest, even if it was completely useless, the fact that they managed to land it on a moving comet (it was going at about 135,000 kilometres per hour!!!) is incredible. Now we know they can do it, I hope they’ll be planning more voyages like that as soon as they can!!

    • Photo: Andrew McKinley

      Andrew McKinley answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      It. Was. So. COOL 😀
      Seriously, this kind of stuff has fascinated me all my life. I’d love to go into space some day myself, but equally as a spectroscopist I find it fascinating the advances in the instruments to put them on space probes – particularly the minimising of the technology.

      You couldn’t put one of our bench-top spectrometers onto a spacecraft – they are far too big and heavy – so you have to design a robust alternative (i.e. robust enough to stand being accelerated to 18,000 miles per hour in about 3 minutes!)

    • Photo: Francesca Palombo

      Francesca Palombo answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      Fantastic achievement – really something to be proud of. But the most important time is coming now, let us see how the current issues will be solved

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