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At This Hour

Rosetta's Philae Space Probe Lands on Comet

Aired November 12, 2014 - 11:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This is unbridled jubilation astrophysicist style. That's how they look when they're excited. Why are they so excited? Because something that has never been done before just happened. A manmade spacecraft just landed on a comet about 300 million miles away from earth. The 67P comet, right now, now has the Philae spacecraft sitting on top of it.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Going for a ride.

BERMAN: A heck of a ride, too, at 4,000 miles an hour. We are waiting for our first pictures back from this spacecraft.

We are joined by a wide array of phenomenal guests @THISHOUR. Miles O'Brien, our space analyst is with us; Professor Hakeem Olusayi, host of "Outrageous Acts" on the Science Channel; Tariq Malik is host of space.com.

Let me start with you, Tariq.

I got a tweet saying, "That thing was in space for ten years waiting for this. You can't start your car after ten years but they started a spacecraft and had it land on a moving comet."

TARIQ MALIK, MANAGING EDITOR, SPACE.COM: There's Nile biting just from that whole part of it. Earlier when they turned the spacecraft on we were on pins and needles wondering if it was going to wake up and here they are just a few months later and they're on the surface of a comet. And there's not much to do. In the ramp-up overnight we were tracking this in from 2: 00 in the afternoon yesterday. Every hour or so they had a check, we're going stop because if something doesn't look right we're going cancel this whole thing and try it again maybe next week. And, no, each check, each little step, everything was green and the lander made it. So we're --

(CROSSTALK) PEREIRA: The lander made it. We're waiting for the images to come back.

I want to bring in somebody who knows a little bit about space travel, a guy that's clocked a few million miles in our solar system. Astronaut Mark Kelly joins us on the phone from D.C.

A delight to have you on this occasion.

I imagine you have been watching and waiting. What's your reaction to this news that the lander has made contact?

MARK KELLY, FORMER ASTRONAUT (voice-over): Well, it's pretty remarkable. You know, in the history of us sending stuff out into the solar system we have found it's incredibly difficult to land things on other bodies. Just looking at the history of Mars, the way we landed on Mars, we've done it successfully most of the time and I think to date still no other country has been able to do it. You look at what the soviets and later the Russians have tried to do with Mars, they have found it difficult to successfully land something. So it's a big deal for everybody, especially for the European Space Agency.

BERMAN: Mark, you've had the honor of being in space but you have also been in mission control, no doubt, as part of so many missions. What's it like to be there when something like this happens? What's it like to sit in that room, in some cases wait for confirmation of something that happens six, seven, eight, nine minutes ago but you're waiting for the signal.

KELLY: Talk about waiting. They've been waiting for ten years. This spacecraft has been flying all over the solar system. It's been by Jupiter and Mars, earth a number of times. So they've been waiting for this for a long time and I imagine they're quite nervous because it's not an easy thing to do. This comet is moving at over 40,000 miles an hour. Space rendezvous is difficult and landing on something and I imagine the fact that this is not -- there's not a lot of gravity there so there's room for error so they must have been very tense but a few minutes ago very excited.

PEREIRA: The director general of the European Space Agency made an interesting comment a moment ago. We've all been in that experience, Mark, where you make something really, really, really difficult look kind of easy. It was kind of a funny humorous moment as he mentioned that. There are so many things that can go wrong and we've heard that about this mission there from the jump, if they weren't sure if the spacecraft was going to wake up. It wasn't the original comet they wanted to land on. There's a certain amount of this that you have to fly by the seat of your pants in a very controlled way, is there not?

KELLY: Absolutely. And we do that with the history of the space shuttle program we've done that and now we see with some not so -- things that haven't turned out the way we want with Virgin Galactic, with the Antares launch last week or the week before. I mean, this stuff is difficult to do and you have problems. But overcoming these problems is what pushes us forward and we get better at this. It is truly -- I think truly remarkable that they shut this thing down for 31 months and then restarted it. That must have been a tense moments.

BERMAN: That takes guts.

PEREIRA: You don't even know if your lawn mower is going to start --

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PEREIRA: -- after not using it for 31 days.

BERMAN: Just a brash, brash move by this group of scientists in Europe right now. Our hats off to them.

PEREIRA: Absolutely.

BERMAN: Mark Kelly, thanks so much for joining us.

PEREIRA: Thanks for joining us. Great perspective.

BERMAN: Again, this is a big moment for humanity.

PEREIRA: We're geeked out about it, too.

BERMAN: There is a manmade spacecraft riding on a comet. We'll have much more right after this.

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PEREIRA: Breaking news @THISHOUR is tremendously exciting. A lander called Philae, about the size of a domestic washing machine but a whole lot smarter, has made an incredible landing. Where did it land? Aboard a comet, 67P. I have to tell you, that thing was moving at a pretty fast rate of speed, 40,000 miles an hour.

Well, the man that's watching this from a very unique perspective is our Fred Pleitgen in Germany.

One of the big considerations here was how not only was it going to be dropped, Fred, but how this lander was going to land on the surface of this comet.

FRED PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, exactly. Not only that, but how it was going to land and especially where it was going to land.

Now, what we see here is our big model of the landing site of where this lander has now gone. If we go to the smaller model I have that right here, you can see the comet actually looks like a little rubber ducky. It's traveling through space like this. The landing site is on top of here. That's where they had to drop this thing because, first of all, they found that the surface on this side of the comet is very, very small, was very smooth. They believe that this was a place where this thing could land without toppling over. They believed there weren't any bigger crevasses or objects that could destroy the lander when it touched down.

The other thing that's very important as well, Michaela, is that there's a lot of sun that falls on this. We've heard from John before that this thing only has power to operate for about two days, but if it gets sunlight, it's got solar panels and it could get fired up again and conduct science for much, much longer. It was very important for them to drop it right here. The landing site is not very exact at all. There's about -- give or take about a thousand feet was their margin of error and they managed to drop it flight there traveling at 41,000 miles an hour, as you said. But this was a long operation. I know that here at the European Space Agency they had discussions about where the good landing site would be because there were different opinions. They only know what this looks like for a couple months now. As the spacecraft was coming closer only then did they realize it was shaped more like the rubber ducky.

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BERMAN: It's a very fast-moving rubber ducky at 41,000 miles an hour. Give you a sense of how fast that is, it's like going from New York to Los Angeles in two minutes or just a few minutes, which is very, very fast.

Now, this is big news on earth in the real world but also in imaginary space world also. William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk, is very excited about this, I've been told by our own mission control that he tweeted -- no, it's not from him. It says "William Shatner touchdown confirmed for away team."

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What happened was William Shatner, he tweeted up there and said hooray. And Shatner put out a video overnight wishing the team good luck and now they're getting tweeted back by Rosetta.

We're joined by Tariq Malik, managing editor of space.com.

Tariq, I'm embarrassed to admit of what I know from asteroids is an asteroid is not a comet. It's totally a different situation here. It's gassy and snowy and this bizarre tumultuous situation on the surface of this comet.

MALIK: And smelly, too. If we could get down there and sniff it, it would smell like rotten eggs.

The comet is an active body there could be jets. We've seen some jets on this comet already. Further back in the net and that's what this fee slay going to be looking at. It will watch that evolution. How the comet will change. Is it mostly ice? A crust of ice? It will really give us a cross section of this icy wonder.

PEREIRA: Here's the question. All of these things that we're looking to investigate and find out and discover about this comet are things we needed to know in order to land a lander on its surface. How do you scout a landing strip on a comet?

MALIK: As your correspondent mentioned earlier, they arrived that the comet in august and it was like, OK, cameras out, let's go scouting and they found five different spots these are smooth enough, interesting enough because you don't want to go to a boring place and safe off in if we land there, we won't fall or destroy the craft. This one, Site J, was selected for its science and safety promise, and they actually had a contest to name it. So how that's how it got its name, Agileka, that was big global contest.

BERMAN: The science will be conducted on the surface by Philae, by this object that's about the size of a washing machine, refrigerator. It will drill substances and cook it, right?

MALIK: Yeah. It will cook it and study how the little gases that come out tells you what's in that ice, what's in the rock or whatever it finds it will bite into it, sniff that gas to really study it in detail. It will take pictures all around of the landscape and they can compare that over time to see how it changes if it changes at all. Maybe it's frozen so solid it will be a static rock in space. And then it will beam that to Rosetta, Rosetta will say "thanks" and beam it back to us a half hour after that. And then we'll see what's going on.

PEREIRA: We're hoping to see images very soon. Again, this is such a momentous occasion.

Tariq, thanks for joining us.

Stick with us. We'll have more on this comet that has a new friend, if you will, right after the break.

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PEREIRA: All right. Let's head back to Germany. We are watching this very special occasion happening here. All of earth's citizens can join the European Space Agency in celebrating a momentous occasion.

Fred Pleitgen a standing by and learning more about the touchdown of the space probe on to a speeding comet.

What can you tell us, Fred?

PLEITGEN: Guys, yeah. I have a very special guest with me. I have Mark McCaughan, who is a professor and the senior science advisor for ISA and this project.

How excited are you?

MARK MCCAUGHAN, SENIOR SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR, EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY: Um, it's hard to put into words. In effect, I put it into emotions. I was almost in tears upstairs. I'd gotten an e-mail from my wife saying, "I'm in tears, why aren't you?" That set me over the edge. It's the combination of years of work by thousands of people but it becomes very personal where you react to something. We've been working on this for years building up to this moment. Well, it's not expressable in words.

PLEITGEN: Let's look at our model again. What is this thing? What is Philae doing right now and when will we see the first images?

MCCAUGHAN: Philae touched down pretty much on time, even more regular than buses in London. It touched down in couple of minutes of touchdown time. We had to wait a little bit longer to make sure we were locking on the surface. There were a few questions being asked where we were, but we are on the surface and we should have taken the images five minutes after that. Those images get sent back to earth. That I can take half an hour to reach us because of they take about half an hour because we don't have much data rate at that distance. Roughly an hour until the images of the surface panorama, around 360 degrees get down to earth. If the first one turns out to be a keeper, if it shows what we want to show, we'll put it out first. If it's slightly tilted and we're looking at the sky with that one, we wait until the other camera pictures come in.

PLEITGEN: What are some of the other things you're going to find out with the Philea? What are the first experiments?

MCCAUGHAN: We have a big battery on board that lasts for 64 hours. We're going to be running all the experiments quickly now. We can recharge another battery with the solar cell. So we expect to have more science. But right now, we're going to measure the imaging. We're going to look down at the surface, look at what the structure of the surface is, we're going to dig down 25 centimeters under the surface, pull material up, put it into ovens on board and start analyzing it in detail. One of the weirder experiments we're going to do, which is an amazing thing, we're going to ping radio signals between Philea here and Rosetta through the body of the comet to measure something about the structure of the inside.

PLEITGEN: Amazing. Congratulations to you. I know you want to get back and listen to what else is being said.

Amazing work. Thank you. Congratulations from everyone at CNN as well.

MCCAUGHAN: It's amazing everyone's been following on today. Fantastic.

PLEITGEN: Guys, back to you.

PEREIRA: There's going to be a few retweets.

BERMAN: You think?

PEREIRA: And also I think a few space explorers inspired by this. Hopefully, students are getting to watch this in schools around the corrupt, too.

BERMAN: I hope so.

And we have a few pictures of what this spacecraft lacked like as it was leaving Rosetta on its way to the comet. That's a model right there. But there were some photos that were taken. Hopefully, we'll have those for you when we come back. There's one right there.

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PEREIRA: Big day for Rosetta, the orbiter, and for a speeding comet, who has a new roommate, if you will. We've watched as a manmade spacecraft landed on a speeding comet.

We want to bring back our space analyst, Miles O'Brien; Hakeem Olusayi, professor and host from the Science Channel; and Tariq Malik, who is from space.com.

It's really interesting -- and, Miles, we'll start with you -- that the Rosetta orbiter launched with a French guy on it in 2004, took 10 years taking a ride around the solar system. Why now? What happens to that orbiter now?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: That orbiter will stay in orbit around the comet and will be the radio relay for Philae, as it does its work. It's got about a 60-hour time frame when the batteries are all up and running and the instruments are going and the little easy bake oven is doing its cooking. And we get all the -- we've got six cameras packed on this thing, 10 instruments. There's some serious scientific payload. So it's part of the relay system. What the hope is, we're going to get a little more bang for our buck out of Philae as it heads towards the sun. And because of its rechargeable batteries, depending on how much off-gassing is going on on the comet, and that can affect the solar rays, of course, we might get science all the way as it gets towards the sun until it gets too hot and eventually breaks away. So this is like a two-ship, if you count the comet, a three-body problem as it goes around the sun.

BERMAN: Something we learned from Mars, the missions there, sometimes we get extra credit.

PEREIRA: Sure.

BERMAN: There's extra credit work done by these devices.

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BERMAN: Professor, it strikes me, again, we're talking about this amazing feat was being done 300 million miles away. But a lot of what this is about is potentially finding out more about earth and history here on earth. There is this speculation that maybe comets carried some of the elements and some of the things on our planet to us millions of years ago.

HAKEEM OLUSAYI, PROFESSOR, ASTROPHYSICIST & HOST, OUTRAGEOUS ACTS: It's a very complex question. There are two key elements that regard us that are related to comets. One is, how did water get to earth? And the other is the organic compounds that were the seeds for life. Did they come to earth via comets? It turns out, tonight at 9:00 p.m. on the Science Channel, we'll have a full documentary about the Rosetta mission. We'll address many of these questions.

PEREIRA: I think it's going to inspire so many more people to pick up books and study. I have a feeling you'll have more viewers of some of your shows on the Science Channel, for sure, Hakeem. Tariq, I want to talk about the future now. This is essentially

bolstering our confidence about what we can do, probably much need, given some of the challenges we've seen in the past couple of weeks. Where do you think we go from here? What is the future of space exploration?

MALIK: Ideally, we would love to have an actual chunk, a big chunk of a comet to bring back to earth. This mission shows, not only can you land softly on a comet but you can do science on board, too. That could mean collecting samples, bringing it back. On a wider scale, one of the best parts about knowing that you can rendezvous with a comet, that you can park next to one, that you can reach it, knowing where it's going to be ten years from now, if we find a comet that might be headed our way towards earth and we have a longer lead time, we know we can reach it with the spacecraft that we have now. Possibly either do something to protect our own world.

PEREIRA: That gets back to the Armageddon.

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BERMAN: Don't even want to go there with that theory.

We have about 30 seconds. I wonder if we can get the photos of this spacecraft, of Philae, as it was leaving Rosetta. That's a model version right there. And then there's what I think is a beautiful, haunting image that I hope we have here -- there it is right there.

PEREIRA: All alone.

BERMAN: That spacecraft, all alone, floating through space, 300 million miles away from earth, hitting a target they shot at 10 years ago.

PEREIRA: It seems as though this is a very controlled environment. It is a big, vast expanse out there. Space is gigantic, beyond even the depths that our minds can imagine.

BERMAN: And now, as of today, humans have sent something somewhere we've never been before.

PEREIRA: It's a big day.

BERMAN: It's on a comet right now. We could get our first pictures from it in a few minutes.

PEREIRA: Stay with CNN. Tweet us your thoughts. Get involved with the conversation.

That's it for us @THISHOUR.

"LEGAL VIEW" with Ashleigh Banfield starts right about now.