Philae is boldly going where no man should go – let’s leave space to the robots

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/15/philae-space-voyager-rosetta-rover

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“I’m awake! How long have I been asleep?” This message was tweeted on Sunday by the European Space Agency’s spacecraft Philae. The probe tumbled into a dark ditch on a comet last November after problems landing on the icy surface. Deprived of sunlight, Philae’s solar panels were unable to supply power, and the craft was feared lost. But Philae’s resurrection, as the comet moves nearer the sun and receives more light, has amazed and galvanised not just the scientists conducting the mission, but also public interest the world over.

But of course Philae didn’t wake up, nor did it tweet to that effect. Philae is not “plucky”, it is not R2D2 or Wall-E: it is a machine designed to examine a comet, equipped with just a tiny fraction of the computer power in your mobile phone. Sorry about that.

Related: Philae comet lander 'wakes up' from hibernation to resume Rosetta mission

That Philae has found the energy resources to resume its broadcasts is truly wonderful. The space agency’s Rosetta mission to send a spacecraft to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and land the probe on its surface is one of the most ambitious and inspiring space science adventures in years. Not only it is a masterstroke of engineering but also, by learning more about the composition of comets, we can glean clues about the origins of our solar system, and perhaps even of life on Earth.

Yet, curmudgeon that I am, I’ve long been suspicious of this new trend to humanise spacecraft: to give them personalities and social media feeds where they post jaunty first-person messages. This has less to do with snootiness about “dumbing down” science – I’m not going to criticise something that brings it alive for schoolchildren – and more to do with our infantilising tendency to personify every object we encounter, down to paper cups that tell us “I’m hot!”. But now I concede that there is something interesting going on here, beyond the conscious plans of the space agencies.

Today’s space engineers grew up immersed in, and inspired by, a science-fiction culture in which robots and computers really do have character and attitude. The merging of science with sci-fi is, to this community, entirely natural.

And, damn it, it works. As the longevity and durability of Nasa’s Opportunity and Curiosity rovers on Mars – which landed on the red planet in January 2004 and August 2012 respectively – have exceeded cautious expectations, I’ve found myself marvelling at the indomitable tenacity of these little machines. “Fist pump!” Curiosity tweeted in April: “I passed the 10k [kilometres of travel] mark on Mars.” And I thought: yeah, go for it, rover.

Look at the blue sunset photographed by Curiosity almost 1,000 Martian days into the mission, and you can’t suppress a poignant twinge at the “little guy’s” lonely journey. “They can’t keep a good robot down,” Curiosity tweeted on Philae’s awakening – and I’ve no longer the heart to find it corny.

But the real significance of public identification with these machines is deeper. For decades the extraordinary and inspirational achievements of spacecraft missions such as Voyager and the Mars Viking landers in the 1970s have been overshadowed by an obsession with human spaceflight.

The images these missions have given us, from the swirling storms of Jupiter to the rubble-strewn slopes of Mars and the “pale blue dot” of our home in Voyager 1’s backwards glance in 1990, have been eye-wateringly beautiful. And the scientific information they have provided has totally transformed our understanding of our immediate cosmic environment: we now know that there are oceans of liquid water under the ice of Jupiter’s moons, possibly patches of it condensing each night on Mars, and hydrocarbon lakes on Saturn’s moon Titan.

Yet still there is a notion that real space exploration needs real people. And so we are forced to witness, on the one hand, the bathos of astronauts taking pizza deliveries on the International Space Station, a mere 400km from Earth’s surface – and on the other, the genuine tragedies of men and women dying in our attempts to put them in space. Yet still some insist that we’ll never “truly” have been to Mars until a living person sets foot on its barren red soil.

One thing humans cannot do is survive for months at minus 35 degrees lying on a comet

Now that rhetoric is ramping up again. The Dutch-based company Mars One is selecting volunteers for a one-way trip, allegedly planned for less than 10 years’ time (despite considerable ignorance of how to make such a journey, what the risks are, and how to establish a sustainable colony). Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur behind the private spaceflight company SpaceX, will announce plans for his Mars Colonial Transporter system this year. Maybe they, or someone else, will succeed. But Christopher Nolan’s plea, in the movie Interstellar, to revitalise human space exploration actually shows its problems. In space humans will go mad, trick each other, argue and die.

Advocates insist that, as far as science goes, there are some things humans can do that robotic craft cannot. But one thing humans cannot do is survive for months at minus 35 degrees lying on a comet.

So if our identification with a personified Philae and its ilk frees us from a human-centric view of how to explore our solar system – and beyond – then bring it on. Welcome back, Philae. We can’t wait for your news.