Sky_walker

Another news: Looks like bottom of a spacecraft is 20-30cm away from the surface, which is great for the instruments! It also seems that bouncing gave scientists and unique opportunity to gather data from more than one spot and compare. It might be very beneficial to the mission. Philae is getting only 1 hour 30 minutes of light every 12 hours, so they'll have to reprogram some instruments to cope with lower amount of energy. But overall it looks like an extended mission will be happening after all. It's sitting still and laughing.

LANDER STATUS UPDATE: http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/11/13/philae-the-happy-lander/ Only 2 scientific instruments are not turned on just yet, everything else works perfectly! It's actually on an orbit (in an every sense of that word), just comet rotates much more quickly than the orbital period (it's supersynchronous orbit). Sadly I don't know the orbital period at the moment, sorry. Comet rotation period is 12.4 hour.

Debatable. In my dictionary - it doesn't count as a landing unless you stand still on a surface.

Ending of a movie is ......... Just move on. (BTW: You got one moment right, but there's another thing off with that scene: They turned off the engines, detached the ships, and.... ships flew backwards! hahahaha, it's more stupid than a scene in Gravity when they Bullock cuts off Clooney - that one at least can be explained with centrifugal force.)

AMS/CIWS systems are not even nearly as good as you imagine. To begin with - they never were tested in a real conflict against several foreign-made missiles (which, by the way, can be fired from a single fighter) and/or different types of missiles. Secondly - regular CIWS systems used on carriers (Eg. Phalax on Nimitz) can target only a certain range of missiles (things like speed and trajectory play a huge role here - hence noone knows how Phalax would behave against real attack using, say, 4 Russian-made missiles fired from a single fighter) at certain range, average expected kill distance being 500meters doesn't give you much of a chance for mistakes. Add to this a fact that none of NATO CIWS were ever tested against Russian or Chinese supersonic cruise missiles - which is what most likely would be used against that carrier. Third - you don't need nuclear missiles to take down a super carrier. There are many alternatives, including large calibre artillery fire, thermobaric bombs, heavy bombs (assuming you can deliver them over target, which is highly unlikely). Fourth, the most important point: CIWS isn't always turned on. If I'd making bets how that stupid idea of flying mega-carrier would be destroyed, it's precisely that: Surprise attack (I'm pretty sure Russians would "accidentally" happen to "loose" one of their launchers to some random "insurgents" if US would push them too far). Which is only made easier by the fact that flying-mega-carrier won't have huge escorts like real, sea-borne carriers do. In either case though - this whole topic sounds like someone seen Avengers one too many times.

First image confirming that Philae is on the surface: These are two images from the panorama. Looks like terrain is extremely uneven, and Philae landed tilted, between large boulders (Philae itself is 1m box, so these boulders look to be around half a meter, perhaps more) Large: http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2014/11/Welcome_to_a_comet

Images sent to any alien civilization should be clear, simple, logical, help with understanding either text messages or cross-reference each other to make it more likely that whoever receives them can create logical flow explaining what is what. Voyager pictures sadly in a majority do not fulfill that role. So even if someone would manage to decipher them and actually view them (as opposite to, say, trying and failing to decipher them as encoded message) - chances of understanding anything but a few images would be rather slim. That's basically what my problem is with these images. Logic, and maths - these photographs do not really follow them, and these two things are the most universal values that any "aliens" encountered would be most likely to use in order to comprehend them. (I would also complain about an awful quality, to the point where some things are very difficult to understand even for humans (Eg. photographs of the sun), but that's a separate topic)

Bruce McCurdy, on a congratulations note from NASA: This thread begs for some more KSP, so here's the Rosetta and Philae I made good few months ago, not really accurate, but does the job: Post the images/links if you got your own Philae and/or Rosetta I seen some good attempts made while ago, much better than my.

Would be good if jets could actually push you off the comet / affect path of a spacecraft going through them.

Food for conspiracy theorists. People have fun trolling

Full resolution images from the landing are available on ESA Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/ More to come

Looks like lander lifted itself after the touchdown and started twisting when flywheel was turned off. But it "landed again" soon after, and went back in horizontal position. Seems like the landing was very near the center of planned landing ellipse. Contact with Philae will resume tomorrow. Update: tomorrow 14:00 CET (13:00 UTC)

Press conference is live, starting now: http://new.livestream.com/esa/cometlanding Can, but Rosetta mission is ESA one, and SQUAD is somehow allergic to anything that got something in common with ESA.

Nuke? Where? There is no nuke.

Comms window with Philae is closed now. Scientists have to wait while Rosetta calmly flies around the comet.

I know PakledHostage, just wanted to highlight that That's all Reminder: Primary stream: http://new.livestream.com/esa/cometlanding Secondary stream: http://www.livestream.com/eurospaceagency

Check out google.com - they made a doodle for Philae! Also, message from NASA: Media briefing should begin in a moment Pure speculation at the moment I'm afraid, even people at ESA don't know the exact cause right now, there can be dozens of reasons for interrupted communications. So far though everything looks like Philae is sitting flat on a surface, as expected, and instruments are gathering data as planned. Stability and communications are two concerns right now, but overall - Philae made the landing - and that's the most important part.

Image, 3km above the surface:

Just reporting what people say at ESA.

Photographs will come in a few hours, perhaps earlier. In either case: today.

Anchors (aka Harpoons) most likely will not be fired again as this risks destabilizing ice screws that hold Philae on a comet. However they are still uncertain just how stable Philae is, so.... it might go both ways right now, really. My best guess is that if they decide to try the harpoons - it'll be after initial data is gathered. Ice screws are pretty much necessary for that and they worked fine.

It's sitting still, instruments are gathering data as planned. Overall - landing was a success, Philae attached itself with an ice screws (yes, it had 3 redundant systems for landing - thruster, harpoons and an ice screws). Just Philae didn't attach as firmly as scientists would like it to.

Seems like thruster did not fire (problem with it was indicated earlier on), and sadly: telemetry indicates anchors didn't fire either, though this will require further confirmation.

Amazing achievement. Glad to be around and hear about it live! Well done ESA! Looking forward to hear about the discoveries!

Data from Rosetta confirms that Philae is on a perfect descend path towards 67/P. Nice to hear Churyumov talking