It was been a bad week for manned space exploration with
the explosion of the Antares rocket intended to re-supply the ISS and the tragic
crash of the Virgin Glalatic SpaceShip Two.
These have naturally thrown light on the safety aspects of space travel - with many pointing out that the pilot of the
VSS Enterprise was the first fatality in spaceflight since 2003, and that the development of supersonic flight was much more risky. One aspect that is more interesting to me is that these were both aspects of the long hoped for transfer of space exploration from government organisations to private enterprise. It remains to be seen how the crashes will affect that transfer (there is an argument that private enterprise is more capable of getting over a disaster than government organisation - witness the paralysis that struck NASA following the Shuttle disasters).
Despite these set-backs, it is clear we are in a golden age of space science. Stunning discoveries that would have been front-page news a few years ago are now normalised (New planet anyone? Yawn!).
Photos such as the ones below were the stuff of dreams and sci-fi, but now come in every day.
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| Dingo Pass, Mars (Photo: NASA) |
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| Rhea and Titan (Photo: NASA) |
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| Hydrocardon seas on Titan (Photo: NASA) |
The story of the European Space Agency's rendezvous, stalking and landing
on a comet is remarkable. When was the last time the ESA was ever made headlines? They deserve them.
On 12 November, the lander Philae will leave the Rosetta spacecraft (which was launched back in 2004) and land on the nucleus of the snappily-named 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, delivering 25kg of scientific instruments. That will be a truly momentous occasion.
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| How we're used to thinking of comets (Photo: ESA) |
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| How we can now think about them now (Photo: ESA) |
When Rosetta was launched it wasn't certain whether there would be any nucleus of substance to land on, or whether it would have the consistency of cigarette ash. But then again, in the 60s there were similar concerns about landing on the moon.
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| Getting closer... |