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I follow Stephen Hawking on Facebook and he recently posted this:
I check out the video he linked with this post and was blown away - I'm still not sure what good landing a craft on a comet will do us here on Earth, but it sure is a very cool video:
That is one very, very impressive technological accomplishment---congratulations are indeed in order for all who were a part of it.
Its a bit sad the craft is dying due an unfortunate final landing spot though. Taking 10 years to land another seems like a long to wait patiently for the next miraculous feat such as this.
I guess that they did get some data back before the batteries went.
Was a real shame -- 2 failures on the landing
- top thruster didn't fire ( supposed to help slow it down)
- landing hooks didn't fire -- with no real gravity there, they needed to hook on
Apparently then it bounced up and came down in a shady area -- no charge for the solar batts.
There was some discussion of trying to get another liftoff and hope to land in a better place, but it would have been extremely risky. They must have stuck with the plan to get all of the data that they could.
Perhaps sometime the landing area will be lit up and they can do some more.
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