Comet Landing Successful

[Ausfree]

An amazing scientific feat when a probe called Philae Lander successfully landed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Geriasimenko ( crikey!! try saying that, fast), it took ten years to get there and only had a 50% chance of success, but they did it. Congratulations to the people behind the planning of the mission.

First Images Of Comet Coming In From Philae Lander | Business Insider

[FeatherWeightDriver]

For those interested, you can watch playback of the key events (well of the control room, not the lander itself) here:

http://new.livestream.com/esa/cometlanding

Also some great pictures on their twittter feed:

https://twitter.com/ESA_Rosetta

I woke up just before 3am to watch the touchdown confirmation (yes sad puppy I know), and the bit they didn't show on the news / highlight reel was about 5 minutes of the key folks very obviously trying to work out what was going on: point at this screen, point at that screen, shrug, rinse & repeat.

Some interesting facts about the mission so far:

Philae lander

• Travelled 6.4 billion km (four billion miles) to reach the comet
• Journey took 10 years
• Planning for the journey began 25 years ago

Comet 67P

• More than four billion years old
• Mass of 10 billion tonnes
• Hurtling through space at 18km/s (40,000mph)
• Shaped like a rubber duck

[d2dave]

I heard a bloke on the wireless talking about this. He said this was the equivalent of throwing a dart, blindfolded, from Sydney and hitting a bulls-eye in Perth.

[Slunnie]

I heard a bloke on the wireless talking about this. He said this was the equivalent of throwing a dart, blindfolded, from Sydney and hitting a bulls-eye in Perth.

You'd have a good arm!

[Pedro_The_Swift]

it only has to reach 40,001mph,, then you just wait--

they still hit that bullseye though,, you'd have to be happy with that

[Scouse]

News reports this morning say it appears to have landed on it's side & they're worried that the solar panels have been damaged.

[Judo]

The bit I found most amazing was that it went into hibernation for 31 months without any communication or control and came back online as planned. It travelled something like 240 million Kms in that time! Someone passed maths at high school.

[FeatherWeightDriver]

Cool pics from the orbiter here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/europe...7638315605535/

[Ausfree]

Truly amazing photo's, a really spectacular feat.

[Eevo]

if you look closely, you can see a land rover at the top of the mountain