Rosetta live feed from ESA

[pluto (Hugh)]

It's pretty amazing isn't it. It's incredible that we're looking at an image taken ON the surface of a comet. To me the lighter smoother stuff kind of looks like ice or like frozen mud, though I could just be reading too much into compression artifacts...

[pluto (Hugh)]

As it is now Philae is only getting 1.5 hrs of sunlight per 12 hour period which is not enough to recharge its batteries. It's got about 50-55 hours of battery power left so they'll at least get the majority of the science data that they wanted. It will be interesting to see if they try something to flip it upright such as firing the harpoons, which apparently didn't fire.

[Ric]

First Rosetta and now New Horizons next year.

What a fantastic time to live in.

Cheers

[pluto (Hugh)]

And don't forget Dawn at Ceres!


In case everyone hasn't seen it yet there's some pano frames down from Philae's resting position:
http://elakdawalla.tumblr.com/post/1...us-a-day-later

And an image I think makes it much clearer what's going on:
http://mattias.malmer.nu/wp-content/...14/11/Civa.jpg

[loKy (Simone)]

.....AAAAND we will be mining ores in no time

[Ric]

Whoops, forgot about Dawn.

Another fascinating encounter to look forward to.

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

hmmm, sounds like Philae could be fairly short lived - not much sunlight, obviously on a severe 'angle' - that is unfortunate. if it runs out of batteries, there may be a chance that it gets more light much later down the track when it gets closer to the sun. but then it maybe damaged by geyser activity. fingers crossed they can get most of the readings they are after.

ps cannot wait for new horizons

[Ric]

Apparently there's a bit of argy bargy about the release of pictures from the Rosetta mission.

Seems there's a lot of Hi Res and colour images that are not being released.

Love to see them especially in colour.

[doppler (Rick)]

The web cast media briefing was an interesting watch today, very informative. http://new.livestream.com/esa/cometlanding .

[pluto (Hugh)]

Originally Posted by Ric

Apparently there's a bit of argy bargy about the release of pictures from the Rosetta mission.

Seems there's a lot of Hi Res and colour images that are not being released.

Love to see them especially in colour.

There has been for a while. People kicked up a stink when Rosetta first arrived at the comet and they didn't release the high resolution OSIRIS images. Here is ESAs explanation:
http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/07...-rosetta-data/


As for Philae they commanded a move of the lander body to hopefully put it in a better orientation relative to the Sun. However it's about to run out of batteries in a matter of minutes now so we'll just have to hope it wakes up again as the comet gets closer to the Sun.

[Ric]

That makes sense now

Thanks for the link Hugh

[Neil]

There's a very informative update and summary of the mission so far on space daily, hope and light at the end of the tunnel, clear skies.