Close-up of a Boulder Named Cheops
The Rosetta mission keeps slowly cranking out good images of features on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the latest being this close-up of a 45-meter-long boulder on the surface of the comet. The blocky chunk was first spotted in images taken in August, but it has taken the OSIRIS imaging team at Max Planck Institute this long to release the high-resolution image, taken with their OSIRIS camera. The chunk reminded the scientists of an Egyptian pyramid, so they named it Cheops, after the famous Pharoah.
The comet has a lot of these boulders on its craggy, rugged surface, and they remain something of a challenge to understand. Nobody’s quite sure if these chunks are made of rock or ice, how they got there, and where they came from. Better images may solve some of the mysteries about this chunk and its icy parent body, and the next phase of imaging begins soon. I can’t wait to see them, and hope that they will release them as soon as they can. As a former comet researcher looking in, all I have to say is “Wow! I want to see more!”
The Rosetta mission has been releasing lower-resolution NavCam images as the spacecraft orbits the comet, mapping its surface. I’ve been posting them and they’re all over the Web. In November, if all goes well, the control teams will send the Philae lander to settle down on the surface to take in situ (a fancy Latin term for “on site”) measurements and samples.
News from the mission continues to stream almost daily, but the image stream seems spotty at times. Many followers (comet observers, science writers, amateur and professional observers) have questioned the OSIRIS team’s slow pace of delivering much-touted high-resolution images. One explanation for the slow stream is that there is a six-month “embargo” on releases to give scientists time to analyze the data and images. The world-wide community of observers and others used to NASA’s fast release of Mars and images from Hubble Space Telescope, are challenging the Max Planck Institute to release images in a more timely manner — not six months from now when public interest is likely to have evaporated.
I understand the promises made to the camera scientists to let them get first crack at the images to do their scientists. It lets them do their science without having to do do “instant science”. That’s pretty standard in most missions. However, most missions these days also have robust public outreach arms that allow for timely image releases that satisfy public appetites for cool science and also preserve a scientist’s right to do the science he/she was promised in return for devoting part of one’s career to building, testing, and flying an experiment. Indeed, the Rosetta mission folks at the European Space Agency have done a remarkable job of whipping up public interest in advance of the spacecraft’s arrival at the comet, and since then have worked to get out the lower-res images as they can.
To be fair, the process for getting and processing the images does take some time. You have to factor in the time it takes to actually get the images, and then transmit them back to Earth (which is not instantaneous) for quick analysis and processing. However, once they are ready, there should be nothing keeping the PR teams from selecting some good ones for release. This is where the NavCam images come from — and they have been delighting the public, and the many other scientists and amateur observers who are keenly interested in comets.
The seeming holdup for OSIRIS images comes (from what I understand) not from ESA, but from Max Planck Institute, which is a separate institution. Its scientists who worked on the camera are holding on to their rights to keep most of the images to themselves in order to get first crack at the science results. They legally have six months before they have to make things public, and have (in the past) cited the fear that somebody somewhere might get an image, do some science on it, and scoop the team. It’s possible that could happen, but in all the years that NASA has been releasing spectacular images from spacecraft, it hasn’t happened. And, those missions that supply great images early on enjoy great public support (which is important the next time a scientist goes to apply for money for another spacecraft or experiment).
Regardless of where the images come from, the next few weeks are going to be blockbusters for the Rosetta mission. If you don’t have their web pages bookmarked, do it. And check in every day or so there and at the Max Planck Institute (linked above). It’s not often you get fantastic images from the surface of a comet as it’s going around the Sun. This is an historic first!
Marvelous image and another fine post. Once again, well done.
I share the frustration aus Skyweek Zwei Punkt Null.
It must be said, this practice of hoarding image and other data from a device carried on a spacecraft all funded by the taxpaying European people and denying them free real-time viewing and exploration of an astounding historical event is an incredibly stupid precedent.
It is sadly reminiscent of the Soviet Union era-style ethic with regard to space exploration: ‘they didn’t show anything either’.
Nor is this any sort of top secret military mission engaged in surveillance utilizing strategically-sensitive technology. Rosetta is operating under good 1990’s technology.
What is particularly troubling is the profusion of excuses and the diversionary tactics supplied specifically to ‘answer’ the groundswell of interested public opinion, by ESA and as so pathetically supplied on the Rosetta site. The latter site blog never actually touched on the actual reason for the data ‘BLACKOUT’ (everyone knows its about an effort to reserve the science for the teams involved – not restricted to OSIRIS!). Nobody doubts they will do a great job of analyzing the data and write wonderful papers describing their findings.
Lets be clear: this new practice reflects a troubling and emerging paranoia in the scientific community, one which increasingly equates a heavy regard on science career interests with a competitive commercial universe, where everyone is supposed to claw their way over the bodies of lesser fellows and make sure they can keep their findings from their arch competition.
They obviously don’t perceive that this ‘maneuver’ to preserve their scientific priority is an unprecedented and pernicious development that could severely hurt public enthusiasm for expensive exploratory missions in the future.
The ultimate result is public discontent.
Which could severely hurt future SCIENCE.
Unfortunately, Rosetta will be viewed henceforth as the instigator.
The questions are: why hadn’t the ESA officials noticed the problem – what they so stalwartly intended? WHY did this happen after over a dozen years of cruise?
Pardon; Rosetta has cruised for about a decade; I meant to highlight the fact that nobody at ESA seemed to have noticed the peculiarity of keeping data confidential for over a dozen years…until the spacecraft arrived at its destination…as we are all now aware.
Actually, I think it’s more of an issue with the OSIRIS team than ESA. The folks at ESA HAVE been doing what they can to get images and information released. As to why they didn’t see this coming at launch? Good question. Even back that far, NASA was happily releasing images right away (or at least quickly) from missions, and scientists still had their proprietary periods respected. But, I wouldn’t place the blame squarely on ESA for this.
Perhaps the OSIRIS folks will have a change of heart; you’d have to ask Daniel Fischer about that. He seems fairly tuned into happenings there.
Why is it that the promulgators of the failed 200+ year-old solar-system accretion dogma insist on labeling Comet 67/P as “icy”, even when all visual evidence, as well as physical evidence (i.e. the unanticipated large bounce), shows that it is a rock, just like asteroids are rocks? As everyone can see with their own eyes, 67/P is a highly differentiated composition, with hills, valleys, mountain peaks, cliff faces, fields of boulders and sand dunes for God sakes. Where’s the melted snowball? It is not a primordial ball of ice and dust. And to claim that water has been detected above the surface of the comet and that this implies it came from the surface is quite misleading. What has been detected is hydroxyl, which can be produced by the combination of oxygen anions sputtered off the surface of rock and combining with protons from the solar “wind”. This is well known electro-chemistry folks.
Osiris should have many high-resolution images of the surface and should be able to put to rest once and for all the existence of these so-called water “vents”. And how is 67/P “out-gassing” streams of particles even now at 500 million km from the sun? And what of the “out-gassing” of asteroid P/2013 P5 and its six coherent streams of particles? Hydroxyl radicals have been detected around that asteroid, as well as most other rocky celestial bodies encountered. Where is the ice?
The landing failure is a direct result of the failure of “consensus” science to predict anything when it comes to celestial first encounters; a sure sign the theory needs to be abandoned. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Designing harpoons to drive into dusty ice, without even giving consideration to the possibility that they would be landing on solid rock is a perfect example of the failure of dogma in action.
I’m sure most careerists, who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, so that they can get published, will spin any new discoveries to support the consensus, although they’ll probably need to invent some new form of fantasy dark matter, dark energy, strange matter, black-hole or other chupacabra for the illusion of ‘scientific authority’ to be maintained.
I guess you haven’t been keeping up with the actual science, so I suggest you go read the Rosetta blog and pages, where they are reporting the findings of a dust layer over a hard ice surface. Also, organic compounds have been found. You can read more here: http://news.sciencemag.org/europe/2014/11/doomed-comet-lander-delivered-harvest-science, where the Rosetta ROSINA instrument has found a D/H ratio that is higher than for water in Earth’s oceans. That says “water” to me, and coupled with a hard ice surface, tells me that this thing is a comet. I’d suggest you follow the mission a little longer, more reading, fewer rants.