Archive: November 12, 2014

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Philae lands on comet 67P

Wednesday,  11/12/14  09:23 PM

Today I am proud to be a human.  The Philae lander of the ESA's Rosetta spacecraft has been landed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, after a voyage of 10 years.  This morning at 8:04PM Philae Tweeted: "Touchdown! My new address: 67P! #CometLanding".  Just typing that gives me chills.

Can't wait to see what we learn from this mission, but we've already created something important: a sense of inspiration.  Few of us work on things which truly have universal impact, but this was one of them.  Awesome!

 

Philae by xkcd

Wednesday,  11/12/14  10:53 PM

... Philae landing, continued ... the other day I mentioned that Randall Munroe of xkcd was planning to live-draw the landing; well, he did, and it's amazing!  You must go there and see it.  There are 142 panels in all, and you can rapidly page through them with your arrow keys to get the illusion of an animated movie.  Awesome...

By the way, I hope this isn't a spoiler, but the first few panels are just a growing dot, by design...

 

 
 

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