<- Hard & eacute; e: 0.028652191162109 sec -> “Alea is jacta. Must Philae to land, but we can not do anything for him, “warned the director general of the European Space Agency (ESA), Jean-Jacques Dordain, Wednesday morning. Mission accomplished: after 7 hours of free fall, the robot landed as planned Wednesday at 4:34 p.m. on the comet tchouri, a historic first in the history of space exploration.
now remains whether Philae is stabilized and he is going to evolve, work and send the data it has collected. It must take samples which will provide information on the origins of the solar system, or even the appearance of water and life on Earth
Our question of the day. Space exploration fascinates you t it always the same?
7:00 terror
The operation was a feat, not to mention 10 years of flight, transactions the last 24 hours were extremely difficult. Last night, the probe has operated in fits and starts and is perfectly positioned above the point of release, before expelling her little robot Philae, using a screw system “swept”.
At 7:00, Philae is then lowered at a speed of 2 km / h towards its landing site, located about 20 km lower. Stabilized only by a flywheel, which allowed him not to go into a spin, it could not be controlled from the ground. This descent to the blind, into the unknown, ended with a landing incredibly daring, especially as one of the supposed plate module ground systems seemed faulty.
Touchdown!
The mission managers have probably not slept all night because of this damn minute. At 4:34 p.m. so the robot, which unfolded before his tripod, landed on tchouri. Small sensors in the feet of the robot allowed him to calculate in real time the distance to the ground and vibration to trigger the instruments stowage.
At 4:34 p.m. so it had to be plated ground by a propellant cold and had to plant in the ground two harpoons to remain anchored there and does not bounce like a ping pong ball. Unfortunately, harpoons did not work, and more than two hours after contact with the alone, the robot was therefore not yet secured its pebble. the landing gear, the famous bow and spear were not activated for 10 years!
The nature of the soil: a leap into the unknown
The other big unknown was the landing site itself. Agilkia called, the selected area, which is a km2, is far from perfect. Extremely rugged, prey to potential emissions, it consists mainly of a “floor” that we know nothing … As explained Alejandro Lasquez engineer at CNRS, “it’s a bit like a ski jumping without knowing what there is behind! Rock? Ice? The powder! “. If the ground was too soft, the sensors should activate the docking procedure ‘would not work and the robot would have been rebounding. To try to prevent a failure, engineers had calculated the maximum travel time for the robot and set up a count-down. This means that at a time T, the harpoon would trigger anyway.
Of course, at present, we still do not know under what conditions the robot landed. But we know he has avoided many of the pitfalls to arise, and it is in good enough condition to send messages to Earth!
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