SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The BBC reports that Philae, the lander of the Rosetta probe on comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko has been located in a high-resolution image from Rosetta.
It was assumed Philae had bounced into a dark ditch on touchdown - an analysis now borne out by the latest pictures, which were acquired from a distance of 2.7km from the icy body.
[...] Rosetta had previously surveyed this location - dubbed Abydos - without success. "Candidate detections" were made but none were very convincing.
The difference today is a closer-in perspective and a change in the seasons on the comet, which means the hiding place is now better illuminated. The discovery comes just a few weeks before controllers plan to crash-land Rosetta itself on to the comet to formally end its mission.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday September 06 2016, @08:34AM
Seems to me they ought to try to park the damned thing on the comet.
That's what the lander was designed to do. Hence the name.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 06 2016, @08:58AM
Yeah, I got that. So, first plan failed, fall back and try to make the best of things. A crashed craft isn't going to do ANYONE any good in the future. So, if it fails to attach, no big deal - it's still an attempted landing. If it ever did get landed, it would be there from now on, right? Even if it fails to make a solid landing, it's now in the same orbit as the comet. They'll be back around again - in how many decades?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2016, @08:23PM
they seem to want to crash everything and build new ones.
Perhaps this is part of a new world order jobs program, since no government lately seems to be free of such conspiracy to smash their probes into heavenly bodies at great expense. That actually doesn't sound so bad when phrased that way; they even provide the pictures for free!