From: Mr. 70s |
“HuffPost Canada TV:
So we’re landing something on a comet. How in the hell is that even possible?
Dan Riskin [co-host of ‘Daily Planet’]:
Simple. I don’t know what the big deal is. You launch a rocket on a trajectory that has it loop around Earth four times, then go around Mars, then go to sleep for two-and-a-half years, and then travel out further from Earth than any other solar-powered spacecraft has ever gone before, then have it wake itself up, and then have it chase down the comet -- which until now has just looked like a far-away space blob, but turns out it's like a giant spinning four-kilometre-long rubber duckie going 137,000 kph with gasses coming out of it.
Then the spacecraft finds a safe orbit around the duck, takes photos of the surface so that the people back on Earth can choose a landing spot, and then from 22.5 km up, it throws a lander out, with no thrusters on it or anything that would control its descent. Simple. Then we all just watch it fall for seven hours until it lands. We don’t know if it’s landing in powder or on a sandy hill, or on sheer ice, but once it lands it'll screw itself into the ground and secure itself with harpoons. And then so long as it didn't accidentally fall on its side, it does some drilling/photographing/sampling and we get to see a side of the early solar system that we've never seen before. Ten years from launch to landing. So really it’s no big deal.”
— Chris Jancelewicz, Huffington Post
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