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Comet Probe Philae Unanchored But Stable — And Sending Back Images
An anonymous reader writes with an update to the successful landing of the ESA's comet probe Philae, which (as mentioned yesterday) had problems attaching to the surface of the comet's Rosetta: "BBC now reports that Philae is stable on the surface. Although no source claims so, we can all imagine a faint humming of 'Still Alive' coming from the probe." Not just stable, but sending pictures while it can. From the article: The probe left Rosetta with 60-plus hours of battery life, and will need at some point to charge up with its solar panels. But early reports indicate that in its present position, the robot is receiving only one-and-a-half hours of sunlight during every 12-hour rotation of the comet. This will not be enough to sustain operations. As a consequence, controllers here are discussing using one of Philae's deployable instruments to try to launch the probe upwards and away to a better location. But this would be a last-resort option.
New submitter Thanshin notes that the persistent Philae bounced a few times, and actually performed 3 landings, at 15:33, 17:26 & 17:33 UTC.Thanshin adds links to a handful of relevant Twitter feeds, if you want to follow in something close to real time: Philae2014; esa_rosetta; and Philae_MUPUS (MUlti PUrpose Sensor
One).
I'm sure that wherever you're from Plutonium is available in every corner drug store, but for us it's a little hard to come by.
"The lander weighs about 220 pounds and is the size of a domestic washing machine"
I'm waiting for the Saturday Night Live skit..
Due to a terrible mix-up. a Maytag washing machine was inadvertantly placed in the cargo hold of the Rosetta spacecraft.
"My socks have been missing for 10 years!" said Matt Taylor. He also added that now he knows why the washing mashine in Mission control does such a horrible job on the rinse cycle and has stymied the Maytag repairmen/women for the last 10 years.
"In hindsight we should never have put the washer next to the Phileas unit", Matt stated as he scratched at his wrinkled shirt. "On a positive note we now have a washing machine (!) on the comet and have mangaged to contact the circa 2003 unit and initiate a spin cycle".
Matt refused to comment on the Ulyssus launch in 1990 where his daughter's "Easy Bake" oven was mistakenly put into orbit for a mission relating to Polar observations.