Rosetta going for the comet today
 

The big day is here! Rosetta's Philae lander tries to land on the comet today!

You can watch it live here:
http://rosetta.esa.int/

And I'm stuck at work. :hmph:

Sods law that I'm going to be sleeping...but hopefully I should be up by the time they get the signal from Philae at 16:00GMT.
It's going to be a bit more dicey than originally planned since the thrusters designed to hold Philae in place on the comet have failed to activate so they've got to rely on the harpoons and the screws. Hopefully it will be enough. :yep:
Exciting day ahead for ESA, keeping everything crossed for them that Philae makes a safe and secure landing. :yeah:
Thanks for the link Dowly! :salute:

Been following on tv this morning and hope the lack of that thruster doesn't tip the balance toward failure after ten or more years of planning and preparation.

Philae is on its way!

very exciting development in space exploration whether the landing works or not.

Landing on an asteroid is one thing when do we start mining these space rocks for their platium and gold deposits.

Well, there was a Arlyd-3 Rendezvous Prospector recon satellite due to launched to the ISS last month. Unfortunately, it blew up on the pad with the rest of the payload in that spectacular explosion at Wallops, Virginia.

Space travel. One giant leap for mankind, then stagger, stumble and crawl for a while.

Keeping my fingers crossed for the Rosetta mission.

Hah, just saw this on the live feed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32vlOgN_3QQ


Two hours to go before we will know if the lander made it! :up:

Confirmed touchdown! :yeah::yeah::yeah:

Good work all at ESA, and thanks to NASA for their assistance on the project! :salute:

http://i.imgur.com/51o1d6i.jpg

:woot:

"We are on the comet!" *drops the microphone*

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3...r45xo1_500.gif

True, besides precious metals those rocks also carry with them an abundance of water that could be used to produce hydrogen. Turning an asteroid into a galatic gas station.

Read somewhere science is even considering what it would take to place an asteroid into earth orbit.

BTW congratulations to the ESA and all involved in making for a sucessful landing!

Tipped to the side, having landed on rocks... but transmitting! Sounds like the harpoons did their job.

Turns out, the anchors failed to fire. Hopefully Philae is stable enough to not tip over or something. :hmmm:

They are considering sending a command sequence to re-deploy the harpoon anchor.

Hopefully Philae will anchor itself successfully and we can start getting some cold hard (pardon the pun) data from the comet. From that there are lots of questions we can get closer to answering, including the origins of water on Earth, and whether one day we could artificially recreate the process on a drier planet, such as Mars.

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/live-experie...veiaaajcjm.png


photo taken by lander on its way down.

http://www.bbc.com/news/live/science...nment-29985988

Radio contact intermittent, but pictures have been received. Any landing you can get pictures from is a good one.

Really good news for European Space Agency, and world science! :up:

Media briefing in about 15 minutes. :yep:

Hopefully some pictures from the surface.

Looks like it's possible that the lander bounced slightly on landing and thus landed twice! :haha: Also it turned ever so slightly before the second touchdown but seems to still be in position for the moment even though the harpoons haven't deployed.
More information should hopefully be available in tomorrows briefing at 14:00CET. No surface pictures yet, apparently they lost contact a little earlier than planned, but it's nothing that they're unduly worried about.

A fantastic day for the ESA, and humanity as a whole. The nice thing about this mission to me, and to others too, is how many nations were involved in it. Goes to show what we can do when we work together. :up:

https://sslimgs.xkcd.com/comics/land...jx7ENjy6ac.png

This is amazing.

I remember when Halley's Comet last came by in 1986. At that time, no one even knew what a Comet was made of and whether it was even solid.

Noe WE have landed on one. :up: