Rosetta awakens, does great job, crashed, job done.

They are now saying that the proble is down and stable on the surface but isn't attached. There are some concerns that any attempt to retry the harpoons may destabilise the craft, and drilling the surface may not be possible as well.

There is a possibility that after the initial landing the probe may have bounced several times including an initial 1km high bounce the first time then a smaller one until it settled.

I saw this quote on the BBC website and it made me laugh.

15 years planning
10 years travelling
Landed
Bounced
Landed
Bounced
Landed
Phew!
 
Photo from the surface of a comet. Amazing achievement.

Welcome_to_a_comet.jpg
 
According to it, they reckon it's getting 1 1/2 hours of sun light during each rotation of the rock (around 12 hours) apparently this isn't enough to sustain the batteries for that long. They are currently trying to work out where it is and what they can do about it. One option is to deploy one of the onboard experiment packages in such a way that it hops the lander out of where it is into a better postion. I'm not sure if it is on it's side or nestled up agains a rock face on one side which is creating a long shadow and causing the lack of sunlight. I think there is much cursing in various europena languages and head scratching to be done to try and figure out some solutions.
 
Are you sureyou don't mean to say that the lander weighs the same on the comet as a penny does on earth? ;)
 
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So that's it then is it end of story another massive failure by all involved, why didn't they equip the craft with a self righting system after all it ain't rocket science is it.

Or is it..:thinking:

Anyway that's ten years of my life I'm never getting back...
 
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