Philae Lander: “It’s time for me to say goodbye” | Hacker News Reader

Philae Lander: “It’s time for me to say goodbye”

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254 pointsaurhum47 comments

Seems Twitter's increasing abuse problems are causing everyone to leave.

Some people don't even get the choice.

This was one of the more fun sciencey things to keep track of, and it brought space back into the media for a short time. Godspeed lil' probe.

Anyway, I kind of wish people would edit this style of title to something like "It's time for me (Philae Lander) to say goodbye"

Reminds me of the days of http://spiritrover.livejournal.com/ and http://opportunitygrrl.livejournal.com/

Ah! thanks for this, I had no idea this existed . I have been reading Steve Squyres' - Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet for the past few months , and its pretty awesome. He gives a really wholesome perspective of what it took to get a ride to the Red Planet. I 'm going to read these journals kinda .. in parallel to the part of the book which explains post landing incidents.

Yes. And add a tiny violin to make it sound even more dramatic and sad.

Please ESA, do not make another of those cute Rosetta & Philae comics for this. :_(

They tweeted the old ones though : https://twitter.com/ESA_Rosetta/status/758231095829729280

Reading this genuinely made me tear-up! It also gives me hope though. We seem to be slowly, sloooowly growing our way off Terra.

To honor this occasion I'm wearing a shirt featuring ladies in bikinis.

"Was I a good probe? I know that I didn't quite stick the landing, but everything turned out all right in the end... right? That's all I ever wanted."

I wonder how much impact the UK's withdrawal from the EU will have on the ESA and future missions.

I think the UK will continue to participate in the ESA, since they are different organizations for different purposes.

A substantial chunk of ESA's budget comes through EU. So the cost of UK's membership in ESA might increase, as they won't be participating through EU anymore.

That's the kind of thing that is hard to justify to Brexiteer voters though... "Now that we're rid of the EU, we have a unique opportunity to pay more tax money to other intergovernmental organisations!"

Here you have ESA funding by source: http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/01/ESA_budget_2...

EU funding doesn't go to the main funding budget of ESA but to other activities like the Galileo satellite system.

Here's a source specifically for the EU portion of the ESA budget:

http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Welcome_to_ESA/ESA_and_the_EU

"Some 20 per cent of the funds managed by ESA now originate from the EU budget."

I'm not disagreeing with you, but it seems unlikely that UK just won't participate in that 20% of ESA activities anymore. So they'll have to renegotiate the membership fee to account for that.

It might not need a renegotiation as such, just a direct payment of the same amount as previously went via the EU account.

Britain can't unilaterally decide to do that. So, a renegotiation is needed.

That's a big problem with Brexit. Some highly visible supporters promoted the idea that Britain will simply be able to dictate new and more favourable terms for everything that happens through the EU framework currently.

It's essentially the same as what Trump is saying -- "I'll deal with China. I know how to make deals. I'll make a great deal" -- With no specifics on what the deal would be and why the other side would accept it.

I'm sure they will continue, but as an EU member state working in the EU is much easier. Perhaps the skill levels will overcome any friction from visas and bureaucracy.

ESA is an intergovernmental organization, visas and any country laws don't affect them. Also it doesn't belong to EU, even Canada is part of ESA.

Very, very little direct effect. While the EU might part-fund the ESA, it's not an EU body.

The effect will be indirect, mainly due to reduced funding to UK science and less collaboration between scientists in the UK and those in the EU.

Its heart breaking to see these missions come to an end though they are all planned only for a few weeks in the first place. I m really glad that Philae came along this far , this was a really really complicated mission - Right from soft landing on the comet nucleus( remember the previous attempts in getting to a comet were impact probes) , loosing that one thruster prior to detaching from Rosetta , having troubles with primary & second batteries , going into safe mode , hibernating and re-awaking again , constant absence of sunlight to recharge batteries and all the delay in receiving signals back from Rosetta - This must have been one heck of an emotional ride for all the involved engineers and scientists. Mad Respect !

I m not sure if Philae conducted all the originally planned experiments or not , Would love for someone to comment on that.

And I love what message they had in the final video update, - now that they shut down the communication module of Rosetta that would talk to Philae - all those power would be used to conduct other experiments ! They managed to throw in some positivity there.

And now it has been turned off, here is a video they made: https://twitter.com/DLR_en/status/758341091070476290

I thought the Philae lander was incommunicado anyway because it landed in shadow and its batteries ran down. Shutting off the system which is supposed to communicate with it doesn't really seem like a milestone.

They definitely got it back online. It ended up getting enough sun to heat back up and get it's batteries juiced.

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