OPINION:
“It’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way.” Sometimes it seems as though Mac Davis, who sang this hymn to himself in a previous century, could have written these words for the men and women who perform magic in space. Their wonders never cease.
The European Space Agency on Wednesday landed a “lander” the size of a washing machine on a comet hurtling through space at 34,000 miles an hour, the successful termination of a 10-year voyage of nearly 4 billion miles. The spacecraft was the first to orbit a comet and the first to attach itself to a dusty hunk of ice.
“We are ready to make science fiction a science fact,” said Thomas Reiter, the director of the European Space Agency’s director of operations. Scientists think the spacecraft, named Rosetta, will analyze samples from the surface of the comet — named 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and not by a poet — to demonstrate how planets were created and how the rock and ice preserved organic molecules. The scientists regard it as something like a time capsule.
The voyage itself was an achievement by the Europeans, recalling the wonder and magic of the American space shot that landed the first man on the moon. Some scientists say the mission could show whether comets, which have been darting through the cosmos from before time could even be measured, are responsible for all of life on Earth.
Stanley Cowley, a physicist and astronomer at Britain’s University of Leicester, explains that “comets represent bodies which were left over, essentially unprocessed, from the formation of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago.” This comet is a relic from a time thought inaccessible. “Comet impacts are thought to have been one of the principal means by which water was delivered to the early Earth, possibly contributing half the water in our oceans.”
Rosetta, named for the Rosetta Stone, which unlocked some of the secrets of hieroglyphics, was launched from a base in French Guiana in 2004, and, working as if thrown with a giant slingshot, orbited Earth and Mars, gathering speed, for the pursuit of the comet. Rosetta will continue flying in formation with the comet at a distance of about 18 miles, something like a wingman, while the lander, named Philae, gathers information and sends it back to Earth. The radio messages require 28 seconds to reach the Earth station in Germany, where the probe is controlled.
The things that man does so well, like this remarkable accomplishment, contribute to a wondrous store of knowledge as well as to the inevitable hubris that accompanies accomplishment. But that’s a caution that in the moment man is entitled to set aside for a moment of celebration. He deserves it.
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