Yeah, for those just tuning in, it was a rather eventful landing.
The vehicle had 3 main devices for securing itself upon landing: spiked feet of some sort to secure it in the material it landed on, a cold-gas thruster to push it into the comet, harpoons to attach itself to the comet and reel itself in. As for what happened:
1. In testing prior to final approach, the cold-gas thruster failed to fire, can pretty much assume that's died in some way over the course of the decade-long space travel.
2. Upon approach, the harpoons failed in some way (haven't seen any details on that; but it could either be a failure to attach to the surface or just not fired, though I think it was the latter).
3. Devices on the feet failed to get a good grip on impact.
4. Comets of that size have tiny amounts of gravity. Craft impacted comet, bounced off the surface, landed a second time approximately 2 hours later (because, again, tiny gravity). At which point it bounced a second time for something like 15 minutes, and supposedly a small third bounce as well.
5. After it stopped bouncing, craft is expected to be up to a km from the landing site (which is a pretty big distance on a comet which is only a few km across). They aren't
sure from pictures quite where it actually is in relation to the planned landing site. Just that it seems to be near a cliff covering it in shade most of the time.
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Topic: Space Thread (Read 289143 times)