ETCETERA

NIGHTCAP

Date With A Comet

Harry Kirsbaum

fter 10 years and 3.9 billion miles,
the Philae lander touched down
on what's affectionately known as
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Nov.
12 — a feat that took our minds away
from the day-to-day grind of war, ter-
rorism, beheadings and politics, if only
for the briefest of moments.
I've always been a fan of the space
program, since JFK's promise to land
on the moon by the end of the 1960s.
And I supported the endeavor by
eating Space Food Sticks and trying
to drink Tang.
In my youth, I dreamt of being an
astronaut until my first trip on a roller

A

coaster led to a panic attack, and
even the sight of other people riding
the Tilt-A-Whirl would nauseate me.
I built a model Saturn III rocket and
watched the moon landing with about
150 other campers at Camp Maplehurst.
As an adult, I watched the 1986 Chal-
lenger tragedy from my apartment
in Chicago and reported on the 2003
Columbia disaster for the Jewish News.
Maybe because the Columbia
disaster was still too fresh, or because
it was the European Space Agency
and not NASA that launched the Ari-
ane-5 G+ rocket from French Guiana
on March 2, 2004, we were told little
about the Rosetta mission. The top
American news story that day was
about a group of suicide bombing
attacks in Iraq that killed 100 people
and wounded 300.
But the excitement of space explo-
ration came back a few weeks ago as
the drama was unfolding 311 million
miles away.
After four elliptical trips around the
sun and gravity assists from Earth and

Mars to gather speed, the Rosetta
launcher aimed its way to intersect
with the comet. Running on solar
panels, the rocket went into hiberna-
tion on June 8, 2010, came back to
full power on Jan. 20, 2014, and ren-
dezvoused with the comet in August.
The comet is 2.5 miles in diameter,
or the distance between the Louvre
and Arch de'Triumphe, Big Ben and
the Tower of London, or the Jewish
News building and Buddy's Pizza.
It is on a 6.5-year elliptical orbit
around the sun, traveling at 41,000
mph and it takes 28 minutes — or the
time it takes to get a human to answer
the Comcast customer assistance line
— to receive data from Rosetta.
Philae tried to stick the landing but
only managed to hang on by two
harpoons instead of three. It found
itself in the shade, which meant that
its solar batteries would soon run out
and send the powerless craft into
hibernation mode.
Fortunately, some data was sent
back to Earth before the power was
lost. The goal of the experiments was
to explore the comet, which hasn't
changed in 4.5 billion years, for infor-
mation that might provide a clue to
determine if life on Earth came from

outer space.
But the lasting story from that day
was about the bad choice in shirts —
scantily-clad cartoon women — of
one of the engineers. He provided a
weeping apology a few days later to
all he offended.
By Nov. 17, when the first real data
from Philae appeared, there was
hardly a mention on television.
After 60 hours of data gathering,
the first results showed that the
comet contains ice, dust and organic
molecules, although the exact type of
molecules has yet to be determined.
The mission was set to end by De-
cember 2015, a few months after the
comet reaches its closest approach
to the sun. It is hoped that the craft
might be jarred and shift into sunlight
to charge the batteries.
The purpose of the mission was to
better understand the beginning of
life on this planet. And the scientists
and engineers have shown the world
what mankind at its best can do.
But as more violent news appears
— of ISIS beheadings, and rabbis be-
ing slain in Jerusalem — it's a shame
that scientists and engineers can't
figure out how to cure the insanity on
this planet.

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