No biggy – just setting down a probe on a comet.
The Philae probe has landed on the surface of a comet, scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) announced Wednesday.
It is the first time a soft landing has been achieved on a comet.
It will be sad if we succeed in putting things on Mars and comets but fail at keeping the planet from becoming inhospitable to mammalian life.
A great accomplishment for engineering and science.
I wish we could accomplish similar feats here at home…..
Re. your last point, there was some potentially-important recent news: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-30015545 . It remains to be seen if the pact will actually be honored.
_
Re. Philae: Things have been rather distracted here at the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences meeting.
There’s a short video – I watched the whole thing. Out of perhaps 150 faces, I was able to pick out one woman for sure, possibly two. That’s less than one percent.
The only obvious woman was a young woman in the main control group (of about 6 or 7 people) – two men of that group spoke into the microphone. Only men spoke.
Oh, and one made it clear that the lander is also male! Philae is a boy, people!!
I’m sorry if this sounds petty, but I felt like I was watching the beginning of Our Man Flint, made in 1966, where the opening scene shows chaos at the United Nations, and the great sea of anxious men all vote for another man, Derek Flint. It’s a spoof on the James Bond films, which is fine, but it just disturbs me that here we are, almost 50 years later, and there are still just as few (if not fewer) women in key roles.
But yah Philae! Surf that comet, dude!
Most space probes have gender-neutral names. Even Philae, which I assumed was some ancient Greek, turns out to be the name of an island in the Nile.
Admittedly it would be nice to have some balance in naming. Caroline Herschel was a great finder of comets, but her surname doesn’t distinguish her from her famous brother.
I think Cassini, Huygens, Galileo and Magellan have earned their place in the list of probe names. Maybe Henrietta Leavitt could be next.
ESA’s list of team members appears to have 9 women out of 92 entries. Almost 10%. JPL’s site has one woman and 9 men on its front page. Again, 10%. Not good, but better than 1%.
http://sci.esa.int/rosetta/43058-mission-team/
http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov/team-members
aziraphale,
An excellent name for an extrasolar probe.
I was thinking about this just a few hours ago, while driving. The sad fact is that compared to world peace, solving hunger, ending racism, and saving the environment; landing on a comet is ridiculously easy.
@Trebuchet & OP
You’re both missing the point: what’s important is putting it there, not dealing with consequences.
Is it? I mean, in principle, solving hunger is actually pretty fucking easy. Have we really tried that hard? What’s the “solving hunger” equivalent of NASA or ESA? OK, those other items look pretty tricky, but I’m still not entirely convinced that we’ve really put enough civilisational effort in to conclude that they’re simply too hard.
In other news, a rat done bit my sister Nell…
It felt out of place so I searched the phrase “rat done bit” and found the poem.
http://lit.genius.com/Gil-scott-heron-whitey-on-the-moon-annotated
[It matches well how I … feel or not-feel]