"It's not the moon landing," I heard someone say the other day.
I resisted the urge to kick their arse so hard they flew into orbit, but only by a very shred of my patience.
The ESA, a shining example of trans-European co-operation, is about to embark upon the most risky phase of an Epic Space Mission* by soft-landing a robotic lander on a comet.
There is absolutely nothing about this entire business that is not awesome. This thing isn't a planet, nor a moon; its lifespan is limited and its orbit is difficult to predict because Jupiter keeps messing with it - and in studying it, we will learn about how our planet and solar system formed, as well as others out there in space.
The project has also led to advances in technology, not least improving solar panels to keep Rosetta going so far from the sun.
This mission still has years left in it, but today, and maybe a bit more in future, I'll be tuning into the ESA livestream to watch this amazing achievement of human science and technology happen.
It's not the moon landing, indeed. No. It's way harder than that.
*These are possibly my three favourite words right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment