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Submitted via IRC for Bytram
It's time for Europe's comet probe, Rosetta, to die. At 4:48pm ET (20:48 UTC) Thursday, the spacecraft fired its thruster for 208 seconds, setting Rosetta on course for a controlled descent to the surface of its comet on Friday morning at approximately 7:20am ET (12:20 UTC).
In accord with the spacecraft's descent to the surface, the European Space Agency will provide live coverage via Livestream about an hour before the landing time. The live video will feature status updates from mission controllers live from the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany.
The spacecraft should touch down at a walking pace, then be commanded to shut down.
Signal Lost as expected at 12:18 UTC
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UPDATE: Rosetta to Finish its Slow Descent to Comet's Surface Friday Morning - SIGNAL LOST
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(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Friday September 30 2016, @06:06PM
There's a chicken-and-egg style question there; were the original mission expectations limited because the use of a nuclear power source was considered politically unacceptable, and therefore the mission duration was constrained by the solar power factor upfront?
Also the issue with the Philae lander: whilst within the (conservative) mission objectives, the performance was clearly limited by the available power budget due to problems with solar. An RTG would have mitigated the associated risks, and provided for a vastly extended mission life. There are few non-political downsides, given this was a well understood & proven technology back when Voyager 1 got launched. (well, the ESA might have had to get NASA to provide the RTG itself, but I'm still filing that under "political".)
Given the massive upfront costs associated with a decade of effort in just getting there, I have a hard time seeing that limiting the lander and the backend of the overall mission due to power generation based on political considerations which boil down to "nuclear bad" was a worthwhile trade off.
And, since my deja-vu kicked in, it turns out I submitted this way back, which covers the the issue in a bit more detail: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/11/24/1019226 [soylentnews.org]