How did we land Rosetta on the Philae comet?

[htrowsoc]

I'm no scientist by any stretch of the imagination, but do show a keen interest.

What I find hard to believe is how did the European space agency manage to get the Rosetta module to go 40,000 mph (or near enough), AND achieve the same trajectory as the comet?

Unbelievable.

[htrowsoc]

outnumbered said:

Are you saying you find it unbelievable in a tinfoil-hat, "the moon landings were faked" way ?

Otherwise, it's just Newtonian physics, pretty much, but I guess they needed a decent amount of computing power to work out the trajectory needed to get the required accelerations from gravity slingshots, and end up in the right place after 10 years.

I just find it hard to believe that we could safely approach an object moving at 40,000 mph when you consider an escape velocity of 25,000 mph, with these kind of speed differentials I can't see how this is even remotely possible as the margin for error would be enormous.

[htrowsoc]

Mr E said:

Very really, by slowing other orbital bodies down (infinitesimally)

How do you go about slowing down another orbital body? Not sure if serious..

[htrowsoc]

Using gravity assist wouldn't slow down another orbital body. Gravity assist is the process of using another orbital body's gravitational pull (such as Jupiter) to achieve a higher velocity in space.

So could the ESA achieve an exact speed based on the trajectory towards the orbital body which was used for gravitational assist?

[htrowsoc]

Max_Torque said:

All is revealed here:


rosetta_trajectory_animation


Pretty clever stuff!

Wow, incredibly complex but fascinating. Still can't understand how they achieved a safe enough and close enough speed to approach an object that is moving at 40,000 mph