When I was younger, I used to get up early, or stay up late, to watch the major space achievements of the day. It is for the sense of moment. Because while seeing the videos afterwards may still leave shivers, there is nothing more intensely real than “being there in the moment as an eye witness” to a history that is going to transcend our meager lives. Portugeuse exploration began between 1325 and 1357 under Alfonso IV. This culminated in 1488 when Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa, to which he gave the name “Cabo das Tormentas” – “Cape of Storms.” In 1492 Christopher Columbus discovered the “New World.” The first English Settlement in Virginia was 1607, Massachusetts 1620, discovery of Manhattan 1609. If you’re keeping track, that’s a span of close to three hundred years. And the point is that given the length of our lives, we are only privileged to “witness” a very few of the truly significant events.
So yes, if you’re wondering I did get up this morning to “watch” the European Space Agency’s space craft Rosetta rendezvous with Comet 67-P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. More to the point at 4 am EDT, I watched this attractive, perky, English woman talk about it and stared at a computer screen at Mission Control in Darmstadt, Germany waiting for the display to peak and then turn downwards – us scientists are easily satisfied!
But really, and most of all, I marveled at such images as this one taken on August 3 from 177 miles. Truly what an amazing achievement. As the perky, English woman said: “brilliant!”
When I was young and frequented New York’s amazing Hayden Planetarium, I just might have dreamed of such a thing, but then I put dreams aside for reality, and now they have become reality – which I suppose says something. I thought this morning about photography and about the meaning of being there, when I am not really there and when the “there” is really not now because of the time lag. This photograph and all the images and data that Rosetta has and will send back connect us not only to each other but really back to the time of the creation of the planet. So to the team that dreamed and then spent a decade coaxing Rosetta to its destination, congratulations. What a truly “brilliant” accomplishment.
I agree that the ability to “stalk” a comet is an amazing technical achievement. Not to put a damper on your enthusiasm but, ultimately, is there more to the outcome than a photo of a rock from the beginning of time?
The issue is not to take a photograph of a rock, if it is a rock. Science crosses the boundary into humanity when the it fundamentally alters our understanding of what Huxley called “Man’s place in nature.” The goal of understanding comets is to understand: first, the origins of the solar system, and second, the origins of life on Earth.