Philae probe lands on comet

Read all about it

I'm so glad the mission is succeeding, at least so far. It's always a breath of fresh air after waiting so long. Can't wait for surface photos to be processed and released.

My god is that news anchor a looker...holy shit.

Did she say 4 billion miles? That sure is far. That's 43 times farther away than the Sun.

XKCD followed the whole thing. Here's an archive.

A big win for ESA after a few years of "Look at China/Japan/India doing what USA/Russia did 40 years ago! And what are you doing, huh?" It's a shame that space agencies need political scoring points to validate their importance... and funding.

I also find it amusing that the probe is actually full of decade old "obsolete" tech. I bet the scientists would sell their souls to have current sensors and manipulators and CPUs up there, heh.

Here is an update:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/11222612/Rosetta-comet-landing-live.html

dew said:

I also find it amusing that the probe is actually full of decade old "obsolete" tech. I bet the scientists would sell their souls to have current sensors and manipulators and CPUs up there, heh.

Yeah no because the stuff they've got in there works and newer stuff probably wouldn't. It's a bit hard to send a maintenance guy to Chury.

We're not sure how long a modern CPU -- with its ultra-thin circuits -- can live. It's not a problem for consumer electronics that are replaced every two years if it can only work continuously for five years before something melts, but for equipment that cannot be replaced at all, it's another issue.

That just means they didn't send bleeding edge consumer tech of 2004 into space either and used even older, well tested hardware. The gap is still a decade.

So the lander mission looks to be a failure unless they can move it to a new sunnier location to charge it's batteries.

Also, one of the lead members of the team has had his privilege checked.

Good job Europe. :)

Rosetta mission: Philae goes to sleep on comet as batteries run out

Looks like it's now a matter of waiting for the comet to move to a sunnier location or change its orientation.

Technician said:

Also, one of the lead members of the team has had his privilege checked.

I like his shirt.

Well who cares about some stupid star shirt?

Overreacting feminists be damned, I say. What an outrage. Absurd and bizarre.

In other news, Philae phoned home:
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/11/15/space-comet-idINKCN0IZ02P20141115

The tumblists (particularly the death threat ones) that attacked him actually cut into him deep enough to make him apologize in tears. This disturbed me to see such an accomplished, good-hearted man be reduced to snivels by the mental bludgeoning by these shit-slinging mongoloids all on account of a fucking shirt his female friend made him.

GreyGhost said:

Looks like it's now a matter of waiting for the comet to move to a sunnier location or change its orientation.

It may happen next year:

Wikipedia said:
While the loss of all of Philae's communication capability appears imminent if it hasn't occurred already, it is possible that by sometime around August 2015 the movement of the comet in its orbit will increase solar panel illumination enough for it to reawaken.

EDIT:

Platinum Shell said:

The tumblists (particularly the death threat ones) that attacked him actually cut into him deep enough to make him apologize in tears. This disturbed me to see such an accomplished, good-hearted man be reduced to snivels by the mental bludgeoning by these shit-slinging mongoloids all on account of a fucking shirt his wife made him.

Accoding to the article I linked above:

...the lander achieved the first-ever controlled touchdown on a comet nucleus. Its instruments obtained the first images from a comet's surface and are expected to make the first in situ analysis to determine its composition.

and:

The scientific goals of the mission focus on "elemental, isotopic, molecular and mineralogical composition of the cometary material, the characterization of physical properties of the surface and subsurface material, the large-scale structure and the magnetic and plasma environment of the nucleus."

Obviously, the important thing here is the fucking shirt.

EDIT 2: Reading my first edit, that last sentence seems a little rude towards Platinum's post. Of course, not my intention, I'm talking about the feminists and such.

Source for my last post, my bad.

Socially inept fucktards aside, this is pretty damn amazing.

Technician said:

Also, one of the lead members of the team has had his privilege checked.

I would laugh to this idiocy, if it wasn't for this little thing.

Brb, going to be offended

He needs a set of spacecraft-themed shirts he can wear on TV, like how Richard Dawkins tends to wear biology-themed ties.

StevieCybernetik said:

My god is that news anchor a looker...holy shit.

I think its the camera lens plus lighting. Skincare commercials do the same thing.

They land a probe on a comet and some people bitch about some guy's shirt. What the hell. He should get some matching pants.

I doubt that shirt made anybody cry. A fashionist, maybe.

What right do they have to make someone cry?

If someone makes a funny noise while eating soup, you aren't given the right to throw their soup on the ground.

To be fair, there would be the same sort of moral response if the dude was wearing shirts with statements like I love Hitler/Isis, gay people suck or deaf people are broken people. Sure these examples are deliberately offensive but it doesn't make the moral response any different. The fact that it's being discussed by a lot of people suggests the moral case here is substantial. From what I've saw, it hasn't compromised the integrity of the scientific achievement, so what's the harm? If anything, the responses to the feminists are even suckier with arguments loaded with relativistic offence.

Eh. I think the guy is punished for something he didn't even do deliberately. I mean, he wore a crappy and rather distasteful t-shirt, but even the strongest feminist bulldyke would have a hard time claiming he was sending a message about women or their role in our society or whatever. This was blown our of proportions in a disgusting way.

Yes perhaps it could have been done more tactfully but it doesn't make their points any less valid though; the responses are more or less 'stfu stop being offended by irrelevant things'. Whether he wore the shirt deliberately or not doesn't really matter, they still have to be pointed out (even if they're going to receive a backlash) in case an implicit bias is at work. I would imagine he would receive the same sort of comments in a public place as well, let alone at a prestigious science event.

He admitted it was a mistake, and the scientific achievement is still celebrated. I can't see anything wrong here personally.

How is his shirt offensive!?!?! wtf!?

I personally don't give a high flyin' fuck what the guy was wearing. We landed something, we, humans, created, on a fucking comet. This is the first time in history we have done this. Jesus, Mary and Joseph the carpenter! What is wrong with people?

It was the polorising tweets and articles that got this off to a negative start.

The tweets by the popular tech feminist journalist that got the ball rolling:

Rose Eveleth said:
No no women are toooootally welcome in our community, just ask the dude in this shirt.
...
Thanks for ruining the cool comet landing for me asshole.
...
I assume the lander is just saving its harpoons so it can hunt down that bearded idiot in the gross shirt.

The article that made this a sensation:

I don't care if you landed a spacecraft on a comet, your shirt is sexist and ostracizing

They wanted negative attention and they got just that. Why? It sells.

Technician said:
The tweets by the popular tech feminist journalist that got the ball rolling:


Rose Eveleth said:
No no women are toooootally welcome in our community, just ask the dude in this shirt.
...
Thanks for ruining the cool comet landing for me asshole.
...
I assume the lander is just saving its harpoons so it can hunt down that bearded idiot in the gross shirt.

*sigh* I'll just leave this here...


And Philae's been now silent for a day.