Originally posted by humy
I met him the other day. He is a sort of cross between Obama and Whodey.

One can always hope he is more Obama than Whooodey.

Originally posted by whodey
It landed on a rather small object some 317 million miles away traveling thousands of miles an hour.

Amazing.

That reminds me, does Obama have his health care web site up and working properly yet? 😛

No, but then, the comet is not actively hostile to landers. Congress, OTOH...

Originally posted by sonhouse
So, the Eagle has landed. Now we will see if it still works!

So the batteries have gone flat, and no chance for a revival? All that money... 😀

Originally posted by pawnpaw
So the batteries have gone flat, and no chance for a revival? All that money... 😀

They did get quite a bit of data from that probe, discovered organic compounds in the thin atmosphere for one and the other notable thing, the orbiter found a rather high frequency pulsing magnetic field, a few hertz or so and that is VERY strange.

Originally posted by sonhouse
They did get quite a bit of data from that probe, discovered organic compounds in the thin atmosphere for one and the other notable thing, the orbiter found a rather high frequency pulsing magnetic field, a few hertz or so and that is VERY strange.

I believe they got quite a lot of data, which will keep them busy studying for a few years, they say... maybe when the comet gets closer to our sun and earth they'll be able to revive the Philae, and continue their mission. Let's hope... 🙂

Originally posted by pawnpaw
I believe they got quite a lot of data, which will keep them busy studying for a few years, they say... maybe when the comet gets closer to our sun and earth they'll be able to revive the Philae, and continue their mission. Let's hope... 🙂

This mission should indicate where improvements can be made. For instance, the comet has a gravity 1/100,000ths that of Earth, that 100 Kg lander weighs 1 gram on the comet! So an obvious improvement would be to have an ion engine giving a couple of grams of thrust, that shouldn't be too difficult. That would allow the thing to scout the surface to find a better landing spot. Also allowing it to move to shade if it turns out to get too hot closer to the sun. It could hop all over such a comet with a small engine like that.