Please give my regards to my fellow robots.Clara Anganuzzi’s illustrations are awesome. I miss all of you and I miss the human touch. You, the members of this project have performed a breathtaking feat. I will be forever grateful for this honor. My dear Earthlings, thank you for granting me the privilege to be the first to land on a comet. You must have some real accurate GPS, or should I say UPS?’ What took you so long?’ If he were alive today he would no doubt say, ‘Not too shabby to travel 4 billion miles and land on a 2.5 mile wide rock. I half expected to see a sign held up by Methuselah saying, ‘Welcome Philae to Comet 67P. I bounced twice before I finally came to rest on its surface. Given that the comet has such minute gravitational pull it took me a long time to come down and rest on its surface. The moment finally came for the space ship orbiter to release me and drop me onto the surface of the comet. God bless those scientists, mathematicians and engineers back on Earth, because every move was precise and beautifully choreographed. Our spaceship had to go through several tricky maneuvers to reach and orbit Comet 67P. The nicest surprise after waking was to find out that we were only 6,000,000 miles from our new home, Comet 67P. No aches, no pains, no creaky muscles and no malfunctioning systems. The alarm clock rang on January 20th, 2014 at 10:00 AM. We did worry about whether our space ship would still be fully functional, if and when we eventually awoke. Nothing to do but sleep it was a boring period. Our furthest distance from Earth was 620,000,000 miles. We slept for two and a half years (31 months). So, we had to shut down all systems to conserve fuel, except emergency communication. We were so far away from the sun that its rays were too weak to power the solar panels. (Hibernation.) That was when the spaceship entered deep space. In June 2011, Mission Control ordered us to get into our pajamas, brush our teeth, and go to sleep. Needless to say, there were a few nail-biting periods. Mind you, we had to be pretty certain about our trajectory because a course correction signal could take as much as hours to reach us, depending on the distance between Earth and my spaceship. I so badly wanted to reach out and touch it: talk about a religious experience.Īfter our brief visits with Steins and Lutetia, we turned our attention to the serious business of reaching and landing on Comet 67P. And here I am, 4.5 billion years later, up close and personal to Lutetia as it races along its own trajectory.
![dear sun dear earth dear sun dear earth](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Dd49mUpxrdU/VL1PYb5UHzI/AAAAAAAAKAo/5e8BHqRBgxo/s1600/Dear%2BGod%2Bnote%2B11.jpg)
What a feeling when I considered that they began to circle the Solar System as it was forming. It was exhilarating to fly faster than a bullet alongside these giant asteroids.
![dear sun dear earth dear sun dear earth](https://greatives.eu/themes/impeka/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/shutterstock_1049227361-1024x683.jpg)
I will send them back to Earth via radio waves that will be detected and read by huge antennas back on earth. We did not want to get too close to Lutetia-21, a 62 mile-wide boulder, too big to mess with. We met several hundred million miles from our landing site. We did, however, have a prearranged plan to rendezvous with two asteroids, Steins and Lutetia-21. I am sure you can well imagine what would happen to our spaceship if we were to collide with an asteroid. Traveling at that speed I had to keep a watch out for asteroids and space debris. I also understand now why that fly-by was necessary because it sent us hurtling into deep space at more then 20,000 miles per hour. Its diameter is 88,000 miles, more than ten times Earth’s 8,000-mile diameter.
![dear sun dear earth dear sun dear earth](http://www.whale.to/c/11709456_1604726196437114_6867059854964996974_n.jpg)
I know now why it is called the king of the planets in our solar system. You cannot imagine the breathtaking size of Jupiter until you have had a close encounter with that Giant. I was sure we were going to crash into it, but instead its gravitational force swung us around and flung us into outer space. I also felt that same excitement when my ship approached the planet Mars. It was necessary to do that in order to get the gravity-assist slingshot effect. I got to see Earth again three times after my spaceship looped around the sun.
![dear sun dear earth dear sun dear earth](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/8f/67/7d/8f677d2c5474835b216f4dd1ff4b86d4--waldorf-education-childhood-education.jpg)
It was nice at the outset of our journey. What a trip! Consider this, it took 10 years to make this 4 billion-mile journey, at the not-so-shabby speed of 23,000 miles/hour, or roughly, 6.4 miles/second. No aches or pains I feel as fit as a fiddle. I have landed on Comet 67P, currently referred to as the Rosetta Comet, and I am safe and sound.