Online At Last: Comet Lander Philae Wakes Up 62
techtech writes with this news from the BBC: The European Space Agency (ESA) says its comet lander, Philae, has woken up and contacted Earth. Philae, the first spacecraft to land on a comet, was dropped on to the surface of Comet 67P by its mothership, Rosetta, last November. It worked for 60 hours before its solar-powered battery ran flat. The comet has since moved nearer to the sun and Philae has enough power to work again, says the BBC's science correspondent Jonathan Amos. An account linked to the probe tweeted the message, "Hello Earth! Can you hear me?"
Watch this space for some more links to follow. Update: 06/14 13:39 GMT by T : From the ESA's Rosetta blog:
When analysing the status data it became clear that Philae also must have been awake earlier: "We have also received historical data - so far, however, the lander had not been able to contact us earlier," [according to project manager Dr. Stephan Ulamec.] Now the scientists are waiting for the next contact. There are still more than 8000 data packets in Philae’s mass memory which will give the DLR team information on what happened to the lander in the past few days on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Now for some local images (Score:4, Interesting)
Pinpointing the location shouldn't be a problem now
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Philae: I see a big rock, and some stars.
Rosetta: O boy, we will never find that guy.
Sheer dumb luck (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes it works in your favor.
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The luck part was that something wasn't broken due to thermal stress far beyond the levels it was qualified for.
so cold, so lonely (Score:1)
It's so lonely and cold out here. Why did you leave me here all alone? Please come and pick me up.
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hehe... Ever watched A.I. the movie?
This time we came for poor Philae but don't tell anybody please.
Obligatory (Score:1)
xkcd [xkcd.com]
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"Watch this space for some more links to follow (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hear hear
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Wait what?
If that's not news for nerds, I don't know what it is.
The press conference (Score:5, Funny)
This time, just for fun, all the men will appear without shirts.
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Your bitter misogyny about not getting laid, is why you don't get laid.
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I know ( I worked there ) but, as you should know, feminazis do not respect national borders.
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Apropos of almost nothing, I am reminded of the scene in Jurassic World where the operator was dressed down by his boss for wearing a vintage Jurassic Park t-shirt to work.
I love this little probe. (Score:1)
I have a shallow affect and don't really care about much on this planet. Yet, reading the message "Hello Earth! Can you hear me?" really put a smile on my face. It's quite interesting when something unexpectedly sparks an emotional response in me.
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The next message is, "Sorry I am late but I met this girl..."
Re:I love this little probe. (Score:5, Funny)
The next message is, "Sorry I am late but I met this girl..."
V'Ger? She's kind of a bitch.
Re:I love this little probe. (Score:4, Funny)
Only if you're a carbon unit. Man, does she hate those!
I've read sci-fi... (Score:1)
... and this sounds all too familiar. Probe gets lost, and after a while it's "found". Now it will have motive power, and seek to return to the creator. Or sterilize and reseed. or ... Mankind, be warned...
This makes me irrationally happy. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been waiting and hoping for that little probe to wake up and start chatting again. I know it's only a lump of machinery, but developing emotional responses to lumps of machinery [wikipedia.org] is built into humans at a pretty low level.
Re:This makes me irrationally happy. (Score:4, Insightful)
A lump of machinery but in a very interesting and unique location...
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Isn't any location unique?
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Some locations are more unique than others.
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I've been waiting and hoping for that little probe to wake up and start chatting again.
Get a grip on yourself - those tweets are coming from a person here on Earth. It's not the lander talking to you.
And The Second Transmission (Score:2)
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Ahhh Hello Ethan :) Want to explain why the universe is big, I mean REALLY big?
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It's using twitters little known CEEFAX gateway.
Annoyed with Spacecraft personification (Score:1)
Am I the only one annoyed with spacecraft personification? Most likely they hire a human to tweet as if they were the spacecraft. It's like pretending Santa Claus is real. Do you want followers to praise the scientists and engineers or the myth of the sentient spacecraft???
Re:Annoyed with Spacecraft personification (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's fun? It gives a little personality to not just the lander, but to the team running the project.
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No, it just means you lack a sense of humor. In the real world, people think personification like this (and in particular stuff like those cartoons ESA released) is cute.
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01001100101100101011000111
Shirt (Score:2)
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Wtf?! (Score:1)
I totally get that people find it funny that a machine talks to them on twitter. What i don't get is how and why these people then tryto talk back to it. Does anybody actually think their tweets are indeed sent back to the probe??? Why people? Think!! If the probe had to waste energy on reading your tweets it will fall back to sleep soon again. And besides do these people realise it was not the probe that sent the tweet in the first place? It was of course some earthly server that was programmed by a fun d
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For the same reason that people talk to Eliza [manifestation.com], Alice [pandorabots.com], and other such entities [nlp-addiction.com] - because it makes us feel good.
We intuitively associate the machines with humanness... Even when we know we shouldn't:
* https://philosopherdeveloper.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/the-anthropomorphization-of-computers/ [wordpress.com]
* http://www.therefinedgeek.com.au/index.php/2010/09/22/dont-anthropomorphize-computers-they-hate-it-when-you-do-that/ [therefinedgeek.com.au]
* htt [dwheeler.com]
A less serious take on the news (Score:2)
In addition to the official ESA news channels, there's a Twitter account by the name of SarcasticPhilae [twitter.com].
(Can't believe I'm recommending anything from Twitter, I suppose this is the exception that proves the rule)