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Last Try for CONTOUR probe
Heartbreak writes "According to 'Last Wake-Up Calls to CONTOUR', mission operators at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory will try for the last time to contact whatever is left of NASA's CONTOUR comet probe next week. In case you've forgotten, the probe never checked in after its escape burn in August. A leading theory for the failure is that the solid-fuel booster engine (mostly buried in the body of the probe) exploded near the end of its burn. They will probably never be certain about what happened, since the burn occurred while the probe was out of contact with ground stations. Astronomers later found three objects near the expected course of the probe, presumably its remains. The plan of action for the attempted contact---aim for the biggest piece."
The articles don't mention if anyone's tried to do a light curve (graph optical brightness vs. time) on the 3 pieces. If it was wrecked & broke up, all 3 pieces are probably tumbling at various rates.
Tumbling (of anything without a very smooth shape & coloration) is obvious from a light curve, and it would be a pretty good indicator of "no hope - don't waste your time".
Flip-side, a flat light curve (or an almost-always-flat one) strongly suggests a functioning attitude control system.
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
I think the contour probe immersed itself in the comet's behaviors, undercover, & followed it closely. At first the comets were suspicious of this strangely shaped companion, but after an initiation rite of ordering the probe to collide with a nearby mass just to "fuck shit up with the business end" the other comets took in the countour as one if their own.
Time went on, valuable data was collected by the clandestine probe... but then one day the probe found it didn't know who it was any more...
had it become one of the comets?
-- The truth is the only thing that nobody will believe.