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Philae May Have Grazed Crater Rim
An anonymous reader writes: The European Space Agency is gradually sorting through the data collected during the brief window Philae was alive and transmitting on the surface of a comet. Analysis of that data has provided another interesting clue about what happened to the probe as it bounced across the comet's surface. According to results from the on-board magnetometer, immediately after the first touchdown, the lander's spin rate increased somewhat. It continued to spin for about 36 minutes until another event dramatically changed its spin rate. This suggests it collided with something, because there was no corresponding vertical deceleration to indicate it had landed once more. Scientists think Philae likely grazed the rim of a crater with one of its landing legs. 65 minutes later, it landed again, and bounced to its final resting place just a few minutes later. The ESA's article has some interesting graphs showing how the data changed as the lander progressed through these different events.
The mission did not succeed in most of its stated objectives. By definition that makes it a failure.
It's not a complete failure, and we can learn from what failed to attempt to design future missions to avoid these particular failure modes, and we can even celebrate the successes that we did get from the mission, but we cannot truly call the mission as a whole a success.
The mission did not fail in most of its stated objectives. By definition that makes it a success.
It's not a complete success, and we can learn from what failed to attempt to design future missions to avoid these particular failure modes, and while we can lament the failures that did occur, we cannot truly call the mission as a whole a failure.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Actually, the ESA is developing RTGs based on americium-241 rather than plutonium.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/nets2012/pdf/3043.pdf