. >> live at the edgar planetarium where they are watching this historic event unfolds. >> this is a historic event. imagine landed on a comic. astronomers and scientists here at the planetarium have been holding a series of watched artists with transmissions coming in from europe is essentially watched the space craft land on the comic. if you think that is not difficult to imagine. it is like twin didn't object when an object with a velocity twice the speed of a bullet. >> and has been a 10 year space odyssey. a huge undertaking by the european space agency. with the goal of landing a spaceship on incumbent. >> >> billions and billions of miles. did that successfully back in august. to really put the icing on the cake. it is dropping a lander on the comeback. >> less stores of information about the origin of the universe. >> everything came from the big bang. >> mention of our own solar system. the origin of the planets including the earth. >> one of the first thing scientists said was it looks easy put in fact it is very difficult to pull off. that is why they're so excited. they

there are certain things you can see every week you can go to the museum, visit the planetarium, anddifferent feel from during the day, something different every week. tonight , we have beer and music. -- tonight we have great beer and music. it is beer week. we have a dozen local brewers in african hall. we have a deejays to set up throughout the museum and a live performance at 9:00 p.m. tonight. >> what has been your favorite part as a participant or as an observer? >> my favorite part is to walk around the aquarium in to see people with a drink in their hands, getting to know maybe somebody new, may be looking for a day, or chatting with friends. there jellyfish. i mean, they are beautiful. >> the culmination of the animals. >> it is very impressive. we do not have this at home. >> tell us a little about some of the spider's we see here on display. >> at the california academy of sciences, there is a very large collection of preserved and live specimens, which are the evidence about evolution. we have the assassin spiders, which are spiders that exclusively kill and eat other spi

at any moment they'll have 100 people, astronomers, seen tests, guests, coming to the planetarium here, watching a live feed from germany of the european space agency mission control running the rosetta mission. a lander called fila making descend down, to your right, look at that image on the screen, that's 67-p, 2 1/2 mile wide comet over 300 million miles away from us. the lander left the rosetta, the mother ship, left rosetta around midnight our time. there has been a hiccup. part of the active descent system has failed. that's the thruster that's supposed to push it into the comet and keep it from bouncing. now a harpoon and ice screws to keep it from becoming detached. you have one large object moving very fast, a small one trying to get on top. the problem if it were to land on a boulder or slope. an astronomer here is plan b will work and it will be able to land on the comet and gather data the surface of the ball of ice and dust. >> a great chance to study the composition of our solar system like when first forming. >> reporter: for you as an astronomer? >> it's great. you see

inside is the planetarium where about 130, 150 people are attending the watch party.rtainly exciting stuff. in fact, the probe well as the spacecraft have been transmitting pictures, a couple of them that we can show you. this one that we just got a couple of minutes ago, shows the spacecraft, the probe, actually descending onto the comet which is about 316 miles away from the planet earth. it's reaching there. it's almost there. so hopefully, it will land on their safely. the second picture i want to show you which was about an hour ago shows the probe descending -- actually separating from the spacecraft. that spacecraft took off from planet earth back in 2004. again, it's taken ten years to reach the comet which is over 300 millions miles from earth. there have been chaps throughout the mission. there's still some challenges ahead. the main one is landing the probe onto the comet. it can't be manually controlled from mission control, so basically this is it. because of the distance from earth to the comet as well scientists say it takes about 30 minutes to reach ea

>> reporter: inside the planetarium here. within a half hour, 100 people, monitoring a live feed. live feed from germany where the rosetta mission control is being run by the european space agency and if you want to take a look to your left, that's 67-p, a mock-up of the comet they're trying to land on. they've started the descent. they're using the rosetta spacecraft. if you can see that image, the tall, longer image is reset that, a smaller object below it, that's the lander. within the past few hours, the lander started the descent on to the comet surface. should be arriving in two hours, this is over 300 million miles away we won't get a signal around 8:00. gerald mckeaguen, astronomer, briefly, the system to help it land has failed they've got a plan b. >> there's three different elements to the landing system. the thruster on top of the lander, is not working. the idea of the thruster was as it first makes contact on to the comet, it would -- the thruster would fire and push it on to the comet. >> reporter: so it doesn't bounce. >> so it doesn't bounce. now they have harpoon

say the same thing, when i was ten, a telescope, a microscope, a chemistry set, a visit to the planetarium. the 410 everything everything is mommy and daddy, mommy and daddy , mommy and daddy. at ten you begin to ask what is beyond mommy and daddy and get this existential shock realizing how huge and glorious and splendors the universe is. then kids then kids just eat it up. they want to know everything , while the sun shines. then they hit 15, and it is all over. [laughter] what is the greatest destroyer of scientists known to science? junior high school. you see, we are all born scientists, wondering where did i come from, why does the sunshine, why do the stars twinkle. we are born that way until junior high school, and then it is crushed out of us. we have to memorize useless facts that don't amount to anything. we are called nerds, it is hard to get a date, hormones kick in. it is it is difficult. in high school you have this pyramid with beautiful people on top, the jocks and the cheerleaders. but hollywood never tells you that as soon as you graduate from high school that permit tur

neil degrass tyson runs the hayden planetarium in new york and also known from "cosmos." having me back. >> always good to see you. so is it thumbs up or thumbs down? >> i don't give opinions. i don't care if anyone agrees with me or not. >> you don't? >> as a scientist and educator i see it duty yusious, if you clues to see the movie. >> how realistic is it? >> they go through wormholes that aren't a part of the galaxy. i mean, it's science fiction, all right? so -- but we know about wormholes, the mathematics of them. we don't know how to make one yet. plus they're kind of unstable. if you go in them they might collapse. that's the science fiction part of it. there's a wormhole sitting there allowing people to reverse and travel much shorter amounts of time to go to another part of the galaxy. >> and the difference between a wormhole and a black hole because you said they explore a planet near a black hole. personally i'd as far as far away from a black hole as i can. >> it's a very strong source of gravity. we know that time ticks more slowly for you than it would else

when i was 10, it was a telescope, a microscope, a chemistry kit, a visit to the planetarium, an astronomy book. something set them off. because before 10 everything is mommy and daddy, mommy and daddy. after 10, kids begin to ask what is beyond mommy and daddy. and then they give this existential shock, this epiphany realizing how huge and glorious and splendorous the universe is. and then kids just eat it up. they want to know everything about chemistry and why the sun shines, everything. and then they hit 15 and it's all over. [laughter] what is the greatest destroyer of the scientists? the greatest destroyer of scientist is junior high school. [laughter] we are all born scientist. we are born wondering where do they come from? why does the sun shine? why do the stars twinkle? we are born that way and to we get junior high school. then it is crushed out of us. all of the sudden we have to memorize useless facts, figures that don't amount to anything. all of the sudden we are called nerds by our friends. all of a sudden it's hard to get a day. all of a sudden the hormones are kicking in.