Philae landing on the nucleus of Comet 67P C-G Options

[vikingmars]

Now, it's time to open a new section devoted to the landing of the Philae lander itself on the nucleus of Comet 67P C-G.

Also to answer better the earlier post,
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=212943
and for your information, here is the quick summary (as a "pdf" file) of the events that are expected to occur during landing on the nucleus and after : it's the timeschedule on which we are working to set up our EPO event in Paris.
 Sequence_ATTERRISSAGE10_UMSF.pdf ( 263.81K ) Number of downloads: 4544

The landing itself should occur around November 11th.

We'll keep you informed

[Phil Stooke]

One aspect of landing which I don't think has been mentioned is that it takes 7 hours for the lander to descend from release to the surface. That's over half a rotation. So it's not like hovering over the landing site and letting go - the landing site is far away, and as the lander falls the landing site moves until, at the appointed time, it's just under the lander. Like one of those action movies where somebody jumps off a bridge to land on the top of the train car as it passes underneath ... only a bit slower. It's easy to see that any uncertainty in the descent rate translates into a change in location on the surface.

Phil