

Philae Lander Nears a Cosmic Touchdown - elijahparker
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/science/space/philae-lander-nears-a-cosmic-touchdown.html

======
Udo
Hats off to the team who made this work with the available power budget,
considering the spacecraft was not really designed to go out that far away
from the sun.

Both Rosetta and Philae would have been an excellent use case for nuclear
batteries, which would have allowed the lander to send data back for decades.
Granted, most of the science data can probably be gathered within the window
we have now, but it would have been nice to have a longer-term sensor up
there.

~~~
ceejayoz
I had no idea this was the case:

> Scientists hope that Philae and its 10 instruments will conduct 64 hours of
> work before its batteries drain.

I'd figured with all the effort to get it out there that it'd be set up to
ride the comet down and give us a first-person view of what happens as it
loops around the sun.

Such a pity.

~~~
andrewgodwin
The DLR article says that, if the solar panels work, it'll last a lot longer -
until it gets too close to the sun and the heat gets too great (about 2AU):

[http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10081/151...](http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10081/151_read-12011/year-
all/#/gallery/17045)

~~~
ceejayoz
Ah, that's much better. Thanks!

------
kitd
Here's an amazing gallery of images from a distance of 10km:
[http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/High...](http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Highlights/Top_10_at_10_km)

~~~
narag
I love how the tail, or at least the coma is already projecting into space. I
believe it's as far as Jupiter, but the most volatile components must be
starting to vaporize.

The spectacle as it gets near the Sun will be gorgeus. And so it could be
watching the tail slowy snowing again on the rock.

I wonder if it will break. Other comets are known to fragment in the hottest
point. The "duck" shape suggest that's possible, but the perihelium is even
longer than Earth's.

