Rosetta - Philae landing on Comet 67P

Thanks for sharing this timeline Mike.

Just to add to this, there's a live webcast from mission control available here for anyone interested in watching it all unveil:  http://new.livestream.com/esa/cometlanding

It will begin (very soon) at 19:00 GMT 11 November and continue (with pauses) to cover crucial mission milestones overnight on Tuesday and through to Wednesday.

Whoop whoop! The first of three go/no go decisions have been made. Rosetta is on the right trajectory to delivery the Philae lander.

Stuart Clark's live blog on the Guardian is now up and running: http://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/live/2014/nov/12/rosetta-comet-landing-live-blog

So, apparently, the third go/no-go was delayed because the cold gas thruster on top of Philae is not working.

It was my understanding that they weren't going to use this anyway, as 67P has a big enough mass for Philae to get to the surface under the small gravitational pull... but Stuart says that the failure of this thruster has made the mission more risky... so maybe they were intending to use it after all.

The fourth go/no-go is a "go"... the landing attempt is definitely happening today!

Detailed timeline from ESA is attached to this message.

Separation of the Philae lander should have happened just now!

Big milestone there.... Philae has separated from Rosetta. 7 hours until landing!

I was nervous watching that! Smiles from the scientists all 'round. It aint over yet!

Good to see Mark McCaughrean on the live feed from ESA... he will, of course, be at the Flamsteed in February to talk about the mission: http://flamsteed.info/event/professor-mark-mccaughrean/

I am flipping in an out of work to catch up, its so very exciting and I am also so anxious for its success because its so not a surefire thing. Thanks for all these updates guys.

Go Philae!!

Update 10:34 mentions that the comet is "singing" 🙂

https://soundcloud.com/esaops/a-singing-comet

Its a nice sound actually, I like it even though they cranked up the frequency for our hearing range.

Now yesterday, I saw this article on while searching google for positional info on 67p itself and top of the search was a Daily Mail headline "67p comet sings - scientists baffled", I couldnt see this news anywhere else so after having a brief read I decided to completely ignore it.

Now more than 12 hours later, the news is real. How the hell do Daily Mail reporters get their dirty hands on proper scientific news before everyone else...hmpph!

the comet is “singing”

How extraordinary... that's quite a beautiful sound actually.

ESA broadcast about to start again.

How the hell do Daily Mail reporters get their dirty hands on proper scientific news before everyone else…

Think I saw something on this too. Not from a tabloid paper and without mention of anyone being baffled - will try and track it down... In the meantime, here's a link to the JPL report:  http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4374

Signal from Rosetta has been re-established... phew! That dragged on much longer than expected. Scary stuff.

We should start receiving data back from Rosetta and Philae now.

We should receive the first images from the CIVA (Comet Infrared and Visible Analyser) imaging system, on board Philae, in the next couple of hours.