---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fleetwood_macncheese@...> wrote :
damn - I'd go for the science first, and then cross my fingers and try to
re-position. No matter what they find, just to be able to DO it, is
accomplishment enough - Hope they get the solar going.
The current plan is to do what they can with the drilling done last because
that will possibly send it off into space. They are all pleased anyway as it
was a long shot even getting where they are now!
Even if the worst case happens they'll get most of what they went for, we just
won't be able to see it start to break up as it forms a tail near the sun
which'd be cool to see but you never know, they might pull off a miracle.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote :
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fleetwood_macncheese@...> wrote :
Too cool! I guess the harpoon is holding. I wonder how long the transmissions
to earth and return, take?
About half an hour to get a message there. But it's not all good news, they
think it's on its side in a crater and if they can't get the solar panels to
work the batteries will run out in 60 hours.
According to their twitter feed they're trying to decide whether it's worth
the risk of getting it to jump about a bit so they can maybe get it upright and
then fire the harpoons again to lock it in place. But they can't decide whether
to do the most important sciencey bit first in case it flies off into space!
This means drilling into the surface to look at what the dust cloud of early
solar system was made from, this bit of rock has been hanging around for 3.5
billion years with all these secrets, I hope they can get something good out of
it.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote :
This is what a comet looks like when you are sitting on it:
