comic | episodes & e-books | store | about
< previous post | next post > | all news from Sep. 2016 News archive | News search | RSS
 
  Philae is found!Sep 06, 2016 9:41 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:They found it! The European Space Agency found their Philae lander (BBC), suspected lost in a dark ditch on comet 67P since taking a hard bounce on its historic landing in 2014! But the season has changed on the comet as it has approached and swung around the Sun, and now, with a little more light hitting the side of the comet where the probe was thought to have eventually come down, Philae's mothership, Rosetta, which has been orbiting the comet all this time, snapped a photo of the surface in which Philae could be seen, lying on its side in a steep ditch. (And you can see the photo for yourself in the linked article.) It's not longer a lost spacecraft! : ) And in actual science terms, although there's no chance of salvaging or reviving the little probe, knowing its position and orientation will help scientists make more accurate use of the data it returned in the 60 hours before its batteries ran out.
 
And there's one last big part of the mission soon to take place: on September 30th, Rosetta will plunge into the comet's surface, getting its final super-close-ups.
 
 
 
 
·····
 
 
 
 
 
< previous post | next post > | all news from Sep. 2016 News archive | News search | RSS
 
© Copyright 2024 Ben Chamberlain. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy