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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Everything about the Rosetta comet mission has been epic. It took 10 years for the spacecraft to reach Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which it did in 2014. Rosetta then sent its plucky little lander Philae down to the comet's surface, but a faulty thruster landed it in shadows. Unable to charge itself properly, Philae floated in and out of contact. The Rosetta team last heard from Philae way back in July 2015. It's been silent ever since.
[...] Rosetta is scheduled to wrap up its mission by descending to the comet's surface on September 30. The comet is currently heading away from the sun, which saps the spacecraft of the solar power it needs to continue operations. There is a sense of poetry to Rosetta rejoining its lander on the comet. It may mark the end of Rosetta's activities, but scientists involved in the mission will stay busy for years studying the data sent back by both the craft and the lander.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by laserfusion on Thursday July 28 2016, @04:00PM
They should have used RTG-s to power it, then it could have lasted decades even without sunlight. It could have been also used as a communications relay node in the future for example.
The real obstacles to efficient space exploration are currently political rather than technical. Such as we can't use nuclear power sources for any spacecraft (or for anything here on Earth) due to political limitations. We humans need to solve the political issues first, before there will be any meaningful progress with space. Space exploration requires our best available solutions, it doesn't care about our politics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @07:07PM
It is not really political. RTGs are both very large and very heavy, which has major technical implications on the mission design.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday July 28 2016, @09:17PM
It really is. The Outer Space Treaty prohibits nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in space. The reason RTGs are heavy is the thick casing around the radioisotope. Without that casing, you've essentially got a dirty bomb. Because of irrational fears over inhaling/ingesting plutonium-238 or strontium-90, all spacecraft save for a few such as New Horizons [ecnmag.com] use unreliable solar panels. The Philae failure was that it bounced off the comet a few times, then landed in shadows. Had it had an RTG, there would have been no problem.
On Earth, the Soviet Union deployed perhaps around a thousand [eu.com] RTGs (we don't really know how many, or where they all are) for uses such as lighthouses. In spite of thieves [unc.edu] and storms [barentsobserver.com], most of the ones that haven't been replaced [nti.org] with solar–battery systems are still intact, so far as we know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @08:42AM
"...deployed perhaps around a thousand RTGs (we don't really know how many, or where they all are) ... still intact, so far as we know."
And you think silly politics is the only reason people don't want an unknown number of dirty bombs deployed at untracked, unsecured locations around the globe?