http://new.livestream.com/esa/cometlanding Exciting! 10 year mission's most exciting moment in 4 hours, ~15:30 UTC, confirmation reaching ground control around 16.00 UTC.
Confirmed landed, harpoons locked, it's sitting on the surface. As a co-worker put it: "We have officially flung a small hunk of metal around the solar system a few times, and then hit a bit of rock and ice flying through the solar system out beyond mars."
This is really cool. Some of the numbers involved are staggering. Launched 10 years ago, with a lot of technology from 10 years before that 6.4 billion km (~4 billion miles) traveled Comet traveling ~34,000 mph Lander traveled ~84,000mph during descent
Last I heard the harpoons had actually failed, however the landing was still successful. I'm not sure how that played out, but yay. Keep surfing dude! Any word that it has successfully anchored yet? https://twitter.com/Philae2014/status/532579550069551104
There's a live briefing soon, the screws deployed but the harpoons have not. I think they're deciding whether it's worth risking trying to fire the harpoons. If they fire but don't anchor it could dislodge the lander.
Just a few images to show the magnitude of this space mission. The 67P comet compared to LA: Rosetta's flight path: Rosetta's triangular orbit of comet:
Apparently the lander "bounced" one or two times over a 2 hour period before settling. Another pic of the surface during decent:
"Philae is now stable and sending pictures - but there are concerns about its battery life." http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30034060
Hopefully the batteries last long enough... at least until it gets close to the sun and we get some pics of the comet's tail up close! After that though, once the comet's orbit brings it closest to the sun the lander will burn up, which sadly was the plan all along.
In hindsight they should've included a heat-based battery recharger. They'd get a few weeks or so of good operation time when the comet starts to warm up. Better yet, should've been nuclear power source to begin with. It's a crime to build such expensive equipment and have them rely on a photovoltaic panel and a car battery. Sheesh. Mankind needs to stop being such pussies and use the real gear.
