The

Tim Hutton - 2014-11-18 09:06:41+0000 - Updated: 2014-11-18 14:43:44+0000

The #Philae  lander's harpoons used nitrocellulose, a well-known explosive which contains its own oxidiser and so in theory doesn't need air to work in. In 2013, nine years after Philae/Rosetta was launched, we discovered that nitrocellulose doesn't explode in a vacuum. Oops.

Watch the video of it not exploding.

One of the Rosetta scientists saw the Wired article in April 2014 and commented, sounding a bit worried. I feel his pain. https://twitter.com/KvonBengtson/status/532618498590404608

Txchnologist

Shared with: Public

+1'd by: stefan jeffers, Nilay Engineer, Matthew Plymale, Vilhelm Sjöberg, Paul Brauner, Paul Gray

Reshared by: Paul Gray

Paul Gray - 2014-11-18 09:12:18+0000

Opps indeed.

This post was originally on Google+