The Black Vault

Has anyone stopped to wonder how the Rosetta Mission is doing these days?

In case you don't know what it was it was a spacecraft sent out to catch up with a comet.
"Why are they wasting my tax dollars on THAT?" some flat-earth tea partier demands.
They aren't. This craft was launched by the European Space Agency (not NASA) back in March of 2004. They expect it to catch up with the comet sometime in 2014. Since no spacecraft is actually capable of just flying off and catching a comet this one gets four "slingshot" gravity assists to pick up the speed necessary. (Three times around Earth and once around Mars).

Just last month Rosetta sent back photos of the Asteroid Lutetia http://sci.esa.int/science-e-media/img/ ... -0-410.jpg which looks like what you'd expect it to look like.
A rock.
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In other news Norman Ramsey died. He was 96 so it was about damn time.

You say "Who the hell was Norman Ramsey?"

Well, you remember that song lyric "Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anyone really care?" (it was recorded by Chicago back in 1969).

The answer was "Yes, one person cares and one person knows---NORMAN RAMSEY DOES."

He invented the Atomic Clock.

The good news is that he's dead now so we can all go back to being late for stuff.

Norman isn't watching us anymore.

about the comet camera..cool

maybe it will catch a pic of a ufo (not that we will ever know)


about your sigline...for some reason the Mayan calendar comes to mind..what will we all be talking about on Dec. 22, 2012?..oh..the anticipation