Saturday, November 15, 2014

Philae is asleep on 67P...

Philae is asleep on 67P...  If we're really lucky, it will wake up again when enough sunlight hits its solar panels.  One piece of good news: all the science data collected during its primary science phase was successfully downloaded.  Given the triple failure of the attachment mechanisms (reverse thrusters, harpoons, augers), it's a miracle that Philae did anything useful at all.  In fact, most of the science instruments performed as designed.  Even the comet sampling drill may have worked (we won't know until the downloaded data is analyzed), despite Philae's off-kilter landing...

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