Ground control to 2014: A year in Space The year 2014 belonged, without question, to the comet-chasing Rosetta mission, which moved humanity’s space exploration programme forward by landing on a moving space rock out in the depths of the cosmos for the first time ever. The first step in the epic journey this year was accomplished in January, when boffins at the …
"The year 2014 belonged, without question, to the comet-chasing Rosetta mission, which moved humanity’s space exploration programme forward by landing on a moving space rock out in the depths of the cosmos for the first time ever."
Seems to me a human actually trod on a moving space rock 02:56 UTC 21 July 1969.
I could be wrong. It's been known to happen.
You forgot to point out that "out in the depths of the cosmos" is not an accurate description of an object that is well within our solar system.
You forget that the comet being studied by Rosetta is also well within our solar system, in fact it will get closer to the sun than Mars does.
Hm?
67P's orbit is highly eccentric.
Its perihelion is 1.2432 AU which is less than Mars's at 1.3814 AU, so yes it gets closer to the sun.
However its aphelion is 5.6829 AU, which greater than Jupiter's. (5.458104 AU)
Not only that, but 67P's mass (10^13 kg) compared to the Moon's (7.3477×10^22 kg) is 1.3609e-10 the mass or 0.00000000013609 of the Moon's.
Escape velocity is estimated 1 m/s. Hasn't everyone played Kerbals by now?
Not that getting anywhere in space is trivial, but compared to this, it is.
Your efforts to downplay the significance of this event have been dismissed.
Left off the list were the re-purposing of the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) to check out the sun and the continuing use of the Kepler space telescope to discover another far-off world. Also left off were the various space rock hits and near misses. There were many more bits that got left off, too, but I am too lazy to dig more than an initial search page worth of results.
Here's to 2014, a remarkable year for space exploration! May 2015 be an even brighter year for space (except for the part about the exploding rocket - we should leave that out).
...and don't forget we said good-bye to Venus Express - after nine years trolling round Venus getting some very interesting science.
There have been so many wonderful 'space' events over the last year, but strangely, for me, the thing that made me sit up the most was a report on the news when Virgin had their accident. The reporter said something like "and in the USA a spaceship owned by Virgin Galactic has crashed during tests' or words to that effect. The key thing was a) it wasn't the top story, and b) the reference to A spaceship - not the Virgin Galactics prototype spaceship, just A spaceship, in the same everyday way that they report 'an aircraft owned by ThingyAir has crashed'. A small thing, but it struck me as rather significant - humans in space is now normal.
technically, Philea was not the first touchdown on an extraterrestrial rock . . . the Japanese Hyabusa (MUSES-C) mission sent a sample collecting probe that touched down on asteroid Itokawa on 20 November 2005 and returned a sample to Earth 13 June 2010.
Hyabusa was a somewhat simpler mission in that it didn't stay in orbit around Itokawa or send a lander that stayed longer than it took to lick the surface and return some grit but it was technically first.
Rosetta/Philea is a whole 'nother kettle of worms . . . there's the orbiting Rosetta that is scheduled for, at least, two years of continuous observations and the Philea lander that has done some in situ analysis and is expected to waken in a few months to do more . . . that's a lot more ambitious and it has gone marvelously so far . . . no points lost for not being first!
i'm just glad both missions will be counted as successes . . . and i hope they both teach my congresscritters that funding that thing known as 'science' ain't such a bad thing because it returns something that we need . . . knowledge of our Solar system that might one day help us avoid the fate of the dinosaurs.
the beer is for everybody who is willing to dedicate ten or more years of their lives to one project just to gather knowledge for the rest of us . . . and the people who funded, built and flew (are flying) these amazing craft . . . thank you.
Can I put in a shout for Voyager 1? I know its big moment was last year but it's still sending back data (on these 'tsunami waves'). It's still adding to science.
We ought to be saying 'Holy S***t!' for every year now on that it still sends a signal, just for the sheer mind-bending enormity of what humanity has managed to do with what is now pretty old-fashioned technology.
I think every day for both Voyager's is a miracle of science and engineering of the bloody things in the first place
There are many probes and satellites still working (in various low level and just about states), the people who built them may be gone, but the pride of their labour remains
The one that always springs to my mind in these discussions is Prospero, which could last 100 years in orbit, having just over half of that time left before coming back down. Until it does, it will be a reminder that Britain developed and abandoned its own satellite launch capability, testimony to the great work done, and to the political short-sightedness that so often dogs technical success.
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