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Long-Lost Comet Lander Philae Found (seeker.com)

astroengine writes: With only a month before its mission ends, the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission swooped low over Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko to see the stranded Philae lander jammed in a crack. After months of searching for the lander, which made its dramatic touchdown on Nov. 14, 2014, mission scientists had a good idea as to the region the robot was in, but this is the first photographic proof of the lander, on its side, stuck in the craggy location called Abydos. "This wonderful news means that we now have the missing 'ground-truth' information needed to put Philae's three days of science into proper context, now that we know where that ground actually is!" said Rosetta project scientist Matt Taylor in a statement.

2 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Re:too bad by hackertourist · · Score: 4, Informative

    If there was a failure, it wasn't a failure of mission control. Nothing they could have done would have changed the outcome.

    The landing had a combination of problems. Harpoons and thrusters not firing (design flaws), and the landing zone having different geology than had been assumed (nobody had landed on a comet before, so no definitive data to go by).

    Despite the problems, the mission gathered most of the data they wanted. Not an overwhelming fail by any stretch of the imagination.

  2. Re: too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    You can read the mission objectives they had written before the mission was actually launched and see that they achieved nearly all of them. Unless they have a time machine, there is no failure cover-up and your the one trying to spin things to suit your agenda.