Rosetta reaches perfect position to get touchy Philae The European Space Agency's (ESA's) comet-catching Rosetta probe is “lined up for lander delivery”, after a couple of rocket nudges placed it into its penultimate pre-launch orbit for the attempt to release the Philae lander and send it to comet 67P/C-G. ESA boffins report that late last week Rosetta fired a thruster for 90 …
However wonderful the images from the surface might be, based on previous experiences of this mission, we may not be allowed to see them for a while, as the arrogant mission staff will do everything possible to keep as much of the data as possible to themselves, for as long as possible (probably at least the 6 month "proprietary period"). They may be technically brilliant, but their approach to the release of publicly funded and therefore publicly owned data has been the worst possible advert for scientific transparency seen in recent times - for a good overview (not by me), see: http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2014/09/30/oh-osiris-2/
Well, I'd rather they spent the money getting good science done, even if I have to wait a bit for the results. Nothing about the results here are in any sense time-critical to anyone, except maybe someone on the team finishing their PhD or applying for a new job/contract/grant. Just relax, and be glad the mission is still working.
All of the instruments on Rosetta and Philae represent years of work by teams of people. Part of the reward for spending a large chunk of your professional life working on a single scientific instrument is they get 'first dibs' on the data. They have six months to write up some preliminary results and rightly take the credit for them. After that, everyone else can access the data and draw their own conclusions.
The comet has been around for much longer than humanity, six months wait won't hurt.
I'm all for the release of scientific data (especially negative results) but to expect instant access to these imagines is unrealistic. The people that will get the first look at these images have devoted years of their lives to this mission, they are the ones that drove it forward and did all the work to get it funded and built. To give them a six month window of exclusivity where they can analyse the data and prepare a few papers (and in the academic world it's publish to die) is, I think, perfectly fair.
If you really want to get on your high horse about this don't bash these guys specifically bash all publicly funded scientists. If anything these guys probably publish more of their raw data publicly than any other branch of science simply because it all starts life in an electronic format.
I've heard these arguments before about how "vital" it is for the researchers to publish their papers, but realistically:
1) The credit for those who make the instruments should be about how well they made/calibrated/operated the instruments - they deserve a LOT of credit for that, and can write appropriate papers about it. On the other hand, if the resulting "discoveries" are so straightforward that anyone on the Internet could come to the same (or better) conclusions if given the data, then should we (or any grant awarding body), really give them "credit" for stating the obvious?
2) If the proprietary period is really so important, how come NASA manages to recruit and retain the teams which operate the many projects (such as the Mars rovers) which DO offer pretty much immediate release of all their data?
This sort of sophisticated manouvering must have a lot of potential for brown trouser moments for the engineers and crew who fly these things.
Worse still is that the critical events will actually have already taken place several light-moments previously, meaning that one's self soiling would be purely reterospective.
Thanks El Reg, you've once again made my morning brighter. Now for a way to spend the time until the 12th? Well, I guess work'll be a viable option. Nonetheless, it's a bit like waiting for Xmas: Every day or other some little event takes place that brings the big day closer. Exciting days.
I was surprised that the craft went into orbit around a bit of rock with an estimated gravity of 10−3 m/s2. This is so far out of my usual calculation area that I cannot even estimate what forces are playing :/
Gut feeling would have been you aim to fly next to it and fight the weak gravity with occasional thruster. Obviously I need to do some more math :)
In practice, this is pretty much what they've been doing - whilst they talk about "orbits", very few (if any?) have actually been complete circuits - most have been "parts" of orbits, with thruster burns at each end. I suppose that the only reason for looking at them as orbits is to ensure that none of them would reach the surface if left to run - i.e. by calculating as if they were long term orbits, it gives safety if the next thruster burn were to fail.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
