Philae has landed.

Bummer.... expensive bummer. It appears that Rosetta got a bad break landing where it finally ended up. I watched as many did in anticipation, then as it landed and the wait for a reply. But it's like shooting a 22 rifle into the sky and trying to hit a marshmallow dead center a mile away.... pretty tough in anyone's book.

People are way over reacting to a science story CNN got wrong.

CNN, FOX News, MSNBC are NOT the first place I go for insightful science or space news in America.

Anyone interested in this mission should go to sites like Space.com, UniverseToday and Planetary.org as well as the relevant mission sites from the people who manage the mission.

American MSM is horribly inaccurate for space stories.

BBC is slightly better but often not by much...

a reply to: JadeStar

Truth.

Fox News had the best reporting on this.

Reporters: Why is the US wasting money on missions like this?
Guest: This is a European Mission
Reporters: Why didn't the US get there first?

Having been a freelance journo with Applied Maths degree I can categorically state that 99.9% of journalist know nothing at all about science, let alone something as cutting edge as this - they're the last places to look for proper science reporting.

The Beeb does provide the best analysis of non-scientific media but it's embarrassingly bad compared to the ESA blog and similar that have remained scientific but provide clear explanations lay people can understand.

To me personally the fact that we've managed to work out the probe was in a cliff/shadow from a distance of over 6Bn km away is absolutely mind-boggling and I have no problem admitting I can't even comprehend how it was done.

I'm incredibly excited to see what the data analysis will provide and even if they reveal nothing or are inconclusive this is still going to rewrite science textbooks and hopefully encourage future generations of scientists. It's up here with man first walking on the moon.

Things that confuse me though are, and I say this without having followed the mission until recent days:

Why land on such an irregular shaped comet? wouldn't shade be an obvious issue with such a strange shape? (or was the true shape only know when it got closer to the comet?)

How did they even manage to land it with so many thrusters malfunctioning? - With a 56 minute delay this seems utterly impossible to someone with as little understanding as myself

What compensatory tasks can the satellite complete if it does turn out that Philae is dead and gone?

Given this is almost 25 year old technology what could today's robots/satellites achieve given the enormous expansion in efficiency of solar./micro electronics etc..? - hypothetical really as 25 years ago I used to play on a tape to tape commodore 64 that took half an hour to load a game of awful graphics, while nowadays anyone can buy a super PC with downloadable or DVD based games (non of which existed at the time).

The current/next gen of satellites are going to be inconceivably cool.

originally posted by: Plotus
But it's like shooting a 22 rifle into the sky and trying to hit a marshmallow dead center a mile away.... pretty tough in anyone's book.

My old Physics professor used a similar analogy to put the scale in perspective - but it's like someone in London trying the hit a pinhead in Moscow that's moving at Mach 10. The scales are truly unfathomable.

a reply to: bastion

Why land on such an irregular shaped comet? wouldn't shade be an obvious issue with such a strange shape? (or was the true shape only know when it got closer to the comet?)

Exact shape and density have been unknown.

How did they even manage to land it with so many thrusters malfunctioning? - With a 56 minute delay this seems utterly impossible to someone with as little understanding as myself

Philae has been designed to land ballistically due to expected low gravity. It had a single thruster (malfunctioning) to keep it from bouncing. As the surface composition has been unknown too, it additionally had two harpoons (malfunctioning) and foot screws.

What compensatory tasks can the satellite complete if it does turn out that Philae is dead and gone?

The primary mission of Philae has been successful. It has been designed to be able to finish it within the ~60h primary battery capacity. The secondary long term science phase would have continued the measurements using solar power if possible.

So there has been a certain amount of redundancy in the mission design due to the unkowns, and it payed off. It was not the optimal outcome, but it could have been much worse.

PS:
There is still a chance for it to wake up when getting closer to the sun, to get additional surface data as the comet will become more active.