Posted on 11/18/2014 2:42:31 PM PST by BenLurkin
With just 60 hours of battery power, the lander drilled, hammered and gathered science data on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko before going into hibernation.
Despite appearances, the comets hard as ice. The team responsible for the MUPUS (Multi-Purpose Sensors for Surface and Sub-Surface Science) instrument hammered a probe as hard as they could into 67Ps skin but only dug in a few millimeters:
Although the power of the hammer was gradually increased, we were not able to go deep into the surface, said Tilman Spohn ... If we compare the data with laboratory measurements, we think that the probe encountered a hard surface with strength comparable to that of solid ice, he added. This shouldnt be surprising, since ice is the main constituent of comets, but much of 67P/C-G appears blanketed in dust, leading some to believe the surface was softer and fluffier than what Philae found.
This finding was confirmed by the SESAME experiment (Surface Electrical, Seismic and Acoustic Monitoring Experiment) where the strength of the dust-covered ice directly under the lander was surprisingly high according to Klaus Seidensticker from the DLR Institute. Two other SESAME instruments measured low vaporization activity and a great deal of water ice under the lander.
...
Stephan Ulamec, Philae Lander manager, is confident that well resume contact with Philae next spring when the Suns angle in the comets sky will have shifted to better illuminate the landers solar panels. The team managed to rotate the lander during the night of November 14-15, so that the largest solar panel is now aligned towards the Sun. One advantage of the shady site is that Philae isnt as likely to overheat as 67P approaches the Sun ... Still, temperatures on the surface have to warm up before the battery can be recharged...
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
Sounds like a lot of homes I have been in over the course of my long and unillustrious life...
So no ice is visible, and no ice is confirmed, and no ice can survive a close encounter with the sun, but because the drill (made, no doubt, out of tungsten), couldn’t penetrate more than a few milimeters, the hardness of what stopped that drill is somehow comparable to ice, and therefore despite all the rock and dust, and not confirming ice, and not seeing any ice - it’s ice.
M’kay. Next mission.
This is all very cool.
The United States will top it in a few months when a probe will make a close flyby of Pluto.
I imagine they knew it was ice before they left Earth. It is, after all, a comet.
I want Pluto to be a planet again. Nine is a much better number than 8
Exactly, they cannot come to grips with their mythology that these comets are NOT ice. It is obvious to me, they are bedrock, and that is why the ice harpoons failed, they probably bounced off like Philae.
Maybe the next comet mission should include magnets on the probes “legs” and maybe they will not bounce?
How about Eris, larger (?) than Pluto with its own moon as the Tenth Planet. I like even numbers. ;-)
They are probably learning more dealing with these problems than if the mission had gone completely as planned.
Yup. We’ll start seeing the first pics of Pluto in January or so as New Horizons approaches.
The Dawn craft will arrive at Ceres in a few months as well.
There’s some idiotic pseudo science theory that there is no ice in space. Unfortunately it seems to be picking us steam here at FR.
Good point!
Half a foot of dust ......????
Geez I got that beat in my apartment......
A block of ice instead of a dirty snowball. We learn something even in failure.
Sounds ceres and hugh
I thought ice couldn’t form under the vacuum conditions of space?
And if a comet is rock, what’s all that stuff streaming off it?
An amazing example of confirmation bias, one of the best I've ever seen. What I find amazing is they supposedly included a drill designed to penetrate water ice, yet now claim that it has FAILED to even make more than a few measly millimeters into the ice for which it was intended to easily sample (!) below the fine dust (which the Electric Universe cosmologist's predicted would be there and is NOT accounted for in the gravity driven cosmologist's model which calls for a re solidified ice surface). They also claim yesterday the drill had penetrated 14" into the surface. . . But that MUST have been the dust before they hit the hard "ice" that is too hard for their ice drill to penetrate! Then, they've claim to have calculated the density of the comet from its gravity field and determined it about 1/3 that of water. . . But how can that be? I have lots of questions about this mission that just don't seem to comport with what they are telling us.
Well, this will do for an Electric Universe PING!
If you want on or off the Electric Universe Ping List, Freepmail me.
Refer to your first question. . .
Second question: it's plasma. every one of the comets we've flown by or visited or impacted has been indistinguishable from the asteroids we've visited or flown by. . . their only distinction is their extreme orbits. Do you know that largest astronomical objects in the solar system, other than the heliosphere, can be the comae and tails of comets? Some of them reach sizes larger than the sun, and can stretch from one planetary orbit to another, which expand that large in just months! Did you know that planets have tails? Mercury, Venus, and even our Moon have cometary tails. . . and their tails certainly are not water. The Moon's is a Sodium plasma.
In addition, ordinary asteroids in ordinary orbits have suddenly, for reasons unknown to orthodox cosmologists, when solar wind activity is high (i.e. High energy plasma streaming from the sun), spouted cometary comae and tails!
The orthodox cosmologists believe that gravity drives everything in the Universe. This has resulted in absurdities such as claiming that the ice is hidden inside the comets (!) and only comes out to play when close to the sun. But that requires the sun to heat up millions of tons of rock (by the way, think about the insulating qualities of a coating of rock dust on the surface of the comet with vacuum separating the dust particles, and a 1.5mm/sec2 gravity to force them into contact with each other to transfer heat mechanically) to beyond the boiling point of water to super heat the ice to create the coma of a comet, which becomes, after the heliosphere, the second largest object in the solar system.
It also doesn't explain how this solar heating can cause comets to start their flare ups beyond the orbit of Jupiter where the solar energy can heat the surfaces of the comets UP to an amazing 140° below zero! how is that going to generate steam jets? Think about the energy required to do that. From what source does that come? Exactly how many Watts per meter of sunlight fall on the surface of a two or three kilometer in diameter comet beyond the orbit of Jupiter?
Given all that can you seriously believe the out-gassing of comets is from steam power? Or is the spread of the coma and tail to humongous size is because of Boyle's Law? What force, causes that spread so quickly? Gravity? Anyone? Perhaps it's like charges repelling each other.
Thank you for the ping and enlightening explanations.
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