Rosetta - Philae landing on Comet 67P

Amazingly lucky that its bounce didn't ping it away from the comet into the nothingness of space.

http://t.co/7wg1xi0V6F interesting article.

Your link was broken again, Brian

Here it is:
http://goo.gl/FGlNBz

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30209533

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30454342

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32298516

Philae is alive!!!!

Really wasn't expecting this - 40 more seconds of data so far, apparently. Amazing stuff.

http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/06/14/rosettas-lander-philae-wakes-up-from-hibernation/

So exciting, were posting on two different threads, lol.

You know regardless of whatever data has been gained from Philae, the whole mission is a glorious testament to the engineering brilliance and cleverness of incorporating fallback machanisms and resistance to harsh conditions and the unpredictable.

Sadly, Philae's contribution has now come to an end. It is "probably now covered in dust and too cold to function" says the German space agency DLR, which will no longer send commands to the lander. (No, I wasn't wiping away a tear, I just had an anthropomorphism in my eye.)

Rosetta continues, of course - at least until it is deliberately crashed into 67P next September.

One funny remark from Astrofest by ESA's Mark McCaughran (approximate paraphrase): "While we applaud Nasa's New Horizon's mission to a Kuiper Belt object, we in ESA were cleverer than that: we waited for a Kuiper Belt object to come to us."

Quite sad about Philae but it at least it did return useful data in that 60 hour rollercoaster ride window.

I remember Mark's comment and actually, with the keiper belt object close to the sun, they are able to get much more information out of it as the sun "cooks" it, whereas Horizons will meet an expectedly dormant object but it will still make for useful data comparisons of different states and not to mention a huge technical achievement in precision navigation of phenomenal distances.

And so it ends - as we knew it must.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36903465

Sad times. At least we have a couple of months of quality time with Rosetta left.

I feel emotionally attached to the little space probe that took a giant leap onto 67P for all of robot-kind.

RIP Philae ⚰