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The level of engineering behind this is such an amazing feat. Landing a satellite on an asteroid, and then shooting it with rare minerals to cause debris to sh
by LilBytes 7y ago
The level of engineering behind this is such an amazing feat.
Landing a satellite on an asteroid, and then shooting it with rare minerals to cause debris to shoot off, to then be collected and later analysed by scientists here on Earth? All while in flight? And there's enough fuel to give this another crack on a _second_ asteroid?
I remember buying dinosaur and space magazines that often had collectable assets (like, each magazine collection would build an entire glow in the dark T Rex skeleton or similar, each magazine came with one bone and you had to get 20+ magazines for the entire 1:200 scale skeleton... we'd probably call this DLC now) and being absolutely amazed at what was written within.
This article brings about the exact same glee and nostalgia.
- ianai 7y agoSyfy has hit that mark with the articles I’ve read on it recently too.
- newnewpdro 7y agoNow if only they could have someone proof read prior to publishing...
- neftaly 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbis_Publishing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbis_Publishing
- riffraff 7y agofunny, I thought "yep, I remember the De Agostini collectible stuff in Italy, I wonder if this Orbis thing is the same". And apparently Orbis publishing is now a subsidiary of De Agostini.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoIt was DeAgostini in Poland as well. As a kid, I had a few T-rex bones from that myself.
- retSava 7y agoYeah, this is the kind of mind-blowing, mesmerizing stuff that dreams are made of. Or rather, that makes people have dreams, much like the moon landing. Being able to see the shadow of the Hayabusa2 coming closer to the surface, the dust when it fired, then moving away, is just simply.... Would be really awesome if there was a video version with interpolated frames so we'd get a smooth video. I know someone did that of one of the moon landings (the one with the sky crane iirc) and the result was simply stunning.
- overlordalex 7y ago> This article brings about the exact same glee and nostalgia. Phil Plait is one of my favourite science writers, and has been consistently putting out great "bad astronomy" blog posts for years (decades?). If you want more of his writing you can check out the website: http://www.badastronomy.com/index.html http://www.badastronomy.com/index.html
- thiagoeh 7y agoThanks for the recommendation. After spending some minutes browsing the content, I was delighted.
- journalctl 7y agoAnd it seems so effortless! Like, “duh, of course we landed a satellite on an asteroid and blew off bits of minerals for later analysis. What, like it’s hard?” Obviously it’s incredibly difficult, but the point is that we did it. I like to think the very first humans who peered up at the heavens with rudimentary telescopes would be incredibly proud. They should be.