Fwd: Alone and Confused, Philae Breaks our Hearts

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: November 17, 2014 7:50:01 PM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Alone and Confused, Philae Breaks our Hearts

 

 

 

Alone and Confused, Philae Breaks our Hearts

by Morgan Rehnberg on November 16, 2014

 

The Philae that could! The lander photographed during its descent by Rosetta. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for Rosetta Team

I was thirteen years old when Columbia disintegrated. Space exploration was not even a particular interest of mine at the time, but I remember exactly where I was when the news came.  My dad and I were sitting in the living room of my childhood home, listening to NPR. I don't really recall how I felt when they broke into our program with the news, but I remember well the two emotions that seemed to permeate the coverage that soon become constant: confusion and sadness. As I watched the almost surreal saga of ESA's Philae this week, I found my mind wandering back to that day eleven years ago. That confusion rang out was hardly surprising; after all, things weren't going right and we didn't know why. But it was the sadness, I think, that drew my mind into the past. Many of the countless people watching Philae's distress unfold before us weren't merely disappointed that a decades-in-the-making experiment wasn't going as planned. The word heartbroken kept springing to mind.

Let me be unequivocal: the loss of a machine, no matter how valuable or beloved, pales in comparison to the forfeit of human life. The astronauts lost on Columbia, like those snatched from us before and since, left behind families, friends, and a grateful world. But, why, then, did it seem to feel so similar to so many people?

 "This is legitimately upsetting" a friend and colleague texted me on Friday as it became clear that the tiny lander's batteries were beginning to run dry. She was far from alone in her sentiment. Across Twitter, people from around the world seemed to be lashing out against the helplessness of the situation.

Oh, wow. My head knows the mission is successful, and data is safe. My heart…wanted a different ending. #cometlanding

— chrislintott (@chrislintott) November 14, 2014

Wake up, lil' @Philae2014 #Philae #CometLanding *sniffle*

— Kate Elliott (@asamsaktha) November 15, 2014

And, in conversations I had with other scientists at the 46th annual Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Tucson, AZ this week, people seemed almost mournful at the prospect of the lander's loss. These same researchers had laughed and cheered just days earlier when shown the crater made by NASA's LADEE spacecraft upon its crash into the lunar surface.

 The questions in my mind are numerous. What's the cause of this inequity? Why do we seem to latch onto certain spacecraft and blithely ignore others? What is it that makes us become emotionally attached to machines in the first place? 

In part, I think, our attachment comes from the unprecedented view offered to us by social media. In 1990, an event not so dissimilar from this one beset NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Flying by the Earth on its way to Jupiter, Galileo had just attempted to unfurl its main antenna, a maneuver critical to the mission's success.  In mission control, they received the bad news: the antenna was stuck. But, the world did not break down in despair. In the days to come, stories would appear in newspapers and on the nightly news, but a world where even email was in its infancy lacked a means for the average citizen to follow along with every detail. 

Nineteen years later, this would not be the case. As soon as it became clear to those in ESA headquarters that something had gone very wrong during Philae's descent, we all knew. And, as data began to trickle in about one bounce off the surface and then another, we all cringed. When the last power drained from the lander's batteries, we followed along, one volt after another. Philae may have been the pride of the ESA scientists and engineers who designed it, but it felt like it was ours. 

But, it didn't feel like ours in the way that a car or a plane or even a space station does. It felt like our friend. No doubt, this can be directly linked to the first person point of view employed for its Twitter account. Instead of the @Phillae2014 account reporting "the Ptolemy instrument has made a measurement," we get "I just completed a @Philae_Ptolemy measurement!!" It seems like a small change, but it opens up a whole new world of connection with this distant traveler. At no time was this clearer than when things started to go wrong.

Hello! An update on life on #67P – Yesterday was exhausting! I actually performed 3 landings,15:33, 17:26 & 17:33 UTC. Stay tuned for more

— Philae Lander (@Philae2014) November 13, 2014

Phew! @ESA_Rosetta I am confident that our teams will find me. Wouldn't like to lose touch with you. #CometLanding

— Philae Lander (@Philae2014) November 13, 2014

 How poignant is that? Two travelers talking to one another from across the solar system. But, as Philae's time began to wind down, the messages tugged even more urgently on our heartstrings.

.@ESA_Rosetta I'm feeling a bit tired, did you get all my data? I might take a nap… #CometLanding

— Philae Lander (@Philae2014) November 15, 2014

And, it all pales in comparison to the way China's Yutu rover signed off when it looked like a malfunction might cause it to freeze to death on the Moon (original Chinese, CNN translation):

… my masters discovered something abnormal with my mechanical control system. …I'm aware that I might not survive this lunar night…

The sun has fallen, and the temperature is dropping so quickly… to tell you all a secret, I don't feel that sad. I was just in my own adventure story – and like every hero, I encountered a small problem.

Goodnight, Earth. Goodnight, humanity.

Talk about heartbreaking.

This personal point of view combines particularly effectively with landers and rovers. These craft seem more human than ships like Cassini or Galileo, with their silent glide through deep space. When something goes wrong with a surface explorer, as it did with Philae or Yutu, it plays on our deepest fears. Every time we're lost, the little voice of panic begins to creep into our thoughts: "what if this is the time that I can't get back?" Reading the "thoughts" of a tiny spacecraft, lost and alone and confused, puts us right there ourselves. As mission controllers edged towards desperation in their attempts to save the stricken explorer, we knew how that delirious urgency felt. Our attachment becomes almost unavoidable. 

So, what does this all mean? I think it's a clear signal that people are engaged by the exploration of space. When it comes to us in the right way, on our terms, it's a big hit. By anthropomorphizing these robots, we humanize the science that they do. Suddenly a machine more than 500 million kilometers away becomes more relatable than the scientists next door who control it. Perhaps ESA, NASA, and other space agencies can extend this relationship even further. Rather than springing to "life" upon liftoff, spacecraft can share with us their view of the entire process, starting not from space, but from the first drawings on an engineer's blackboard.

One thing's for sure, though. A relationship like that won't make times like these any easier to handle.

 

About Morgan Rehnberg

Morgan Rehnberg studies astrophysics and planetary science as a graduate student at the University of Colorado - Boulder. When he's not plumbing the depths of Saturn's rings, he advocates for greater public engagement with science. 

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Comet-Bouncing Philae Spacecraft Caught On Camera In Newly Enhanced Images

by Elizabeth Howell on November 16, 2014

 

The Rosetta spacecraft spotted Philae and its shadow shortly after the lander touched down on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and bounced up again. The first image is taken on Nov. 12, 2014 at 10:30 a.m. EDT (3:30 p.m. UTC) and the second five minutes later. Credit: SA/Rosetta/NAVCAM; pre-processed by Mikel Canania

When the Philae lander arrived at its target comet last week, the little spacecraft landed three times in two hours before coming to a rest. While controllers could see this information from data coming in, they didn't have any photographic proof — until now.

The animation above, an enhancement of images from the orbiting Rosetta spacecraft released late last week, show Philae and its shadow –mid-bounce! — very shortly after landing on Wednesday (Nov. 12). Philae's first jump lasted nearly two hours before it took off again, flew for another few minutes, and landed in a shady spot where its batteries drained on Friday.

Here's another cool thing about these images — some of the credit to Philae's discovery comes through crowdsourcing! This is what the European Space Agency's Rosetta blog said about who found this:

Credit for the first discovery goes to Gabriele Bellei, from the interplanetary division of Flight Dynamics, who spent hours searching the NAVCAM images for evidence of the landing.

Once the images were published, blog reader John Broughton posted a comment to report that he had spotted the lander in them (thank you, John). There was also quite some speculation by Rosetta blog readers in the comments section, wondering which features might be attributable to the lander. Martin Esser, Henning, and Kasuha in particular were among the first to make insightful observations on the topic, although many others have since joined in.

Last but not least, a careful independent review of the images was made by Mikel Canania from the earth observation division of Flight Dynamics, with the same conclusion. He also made the annotated animation shown here.

This goes to show you that while there is disappointment that Philae is in a long (perhaps permanent) sleep sooner than scientists hoped, data from the spacecraft will continue to be analyzed in the coming months and years. And don't forget that the orbiting Rosetta spacecraft is in good health and will continue to return data on 67P as it draws closer to the Sun through 2015.

A still of the Philae spacecraft bouncing off Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in an animation of Rosetta spacecraft images. The image was taken Nov. 12, 2014 at 10:35 a.m. EDT (3:35 p.m. UTC). Credit: SA/Rosetta/NAVCAM; pre-processed by Mikel Canania

 

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