ESA’s Rosetta Comet-Landing Mission Featured In New UK Short Film Ambition

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
An innovative short film with special effects worthy of a big-budget blockbuster isn’t the average way a space agency promotes an upcoming mission, but then again, ESA’s Rosetta mission is hardly your ordinary mission.
Rosetta, which on November 12 is scheduled to have its Philae probe land on 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (67P/C-G), is the subject of Tomek Bagiński’s short film Ambition, which stars Aiden Gillen and Aisling Franciosi as a futuristic world-creating mentor-and-apprentice duo that pauses to reflect on the mission’s success.

After the apprentice attempts and seemingly fails at assembling planets, moons and other objects out of rubble, her mentor offers a lesson focusing on comets – “one trillion celestial balls of dust, ice, complex molecules, left over from the birth of our Solar System. Once thought of as messengers of doom and destruction, and yet so enchanting.”
“And we were to catch one: a staggeringly ambitious plan,” he added.
The movie, which was filmed on location in Iceland and first screened on October 24 as part of British Film Institute’s celebration of Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder in London, is nearly as ambitious – and in its universe, the successful outcome of the Rosetta mission is presented as a historical fact, and a precursor to bigger and better things.
In mere weeks, ESA hopes that science fiction will become science fact, as Philae will attempt to become the first spacecraft ever to attempt a soft landing on a comet. Earlier this month, the mission successfully completed a comprehensive readiness review and the primary landing site, located on the smaller of the comet’s lobes, was approved.
“A mission that began as a dream, but that after decades of planning, construction and flight through the Solar System, has arrived at its goal,” the ESA explained in a statement Friday. “Its aim? To unlock the secrets hidden within the icy treasure chest for 4.6 billion years. To study its make-up and its history. To search for clues as to our own origins.”
“From 100 km distance, to 50, 30 and then, defying all expectations, to just 10 km, Rosetta continues to captivate and intrigue with every image and every data packet returned,” the agency added. “It will rewrite the textbooks of cometary science. But there is more, an even greater challenge, another ambitious first: to land on the comet.”
“As a science fiction writer, it’s hard to think of a more stirring theme than the origin and ultimate destiny of life in the Universe,” noted Alastair Reynolds, a science fiction writer from Wales. “With the arrival of Rosetta at 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko – an astonishing, audacious technical achievement, literally the stuff of science fiction – we are on the brink of a bold new chapter in our understanding of our place in the Universe.”
ESA Rosetta project scientist Matt Taylor said that the orbiter is currently less than 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from the comet, and both of them were traveling at speeds of more than 60,000 km/h (37,000 mph). Previous reports indicate that the Philae lander will be ejected shortly after 08:30 GMT, and that its descent was expected to last about seven hours. Thirty minutes later, the mission team will know whether or not the landing attempt was a success.
Once Philae touches down on 67P/C-G, it will secure itself using harpoons and ice screws to ensure that it doesn’t get thrown off of the low-gravity comet. It will then begin recharging its solar-powered batteries, and will eventually begin using a suite of 10 instruments for analysis of the comet. It will most likely stop working next March.
Rosetta, on the other hand, is expected to follow the comet throughout its closest approach to the sun in August 2015, and then back towards the outer reaches of the solar system. The mission’s goal is to study how comets evolves and hopefully learn more about how water originally formed and perhaps even how life on Earth came to be.
“All of this is new and unique and has never been done before,” Taylor said. “It may sound like science fiction, but it’s a reality for the teams that have dedicated their entire lives to this mission, driven to push the boundaries of our technology for the benefit of science and to seek answers to the biggest questions regarding our Solar System’s origins.”
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