Misc

Philae lander bounced several times on landing and remains unanchored and in a poor location for sunlight to power it.

Photo shows lander located below rocky cliff. No dirty snowball to be seen.

"The first photos show one of Philae's three legs resting on bleak rocky terrain of the comet known as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenkohas."

At least they admit it.

"Ground controllers are going to see whether it's possible to maneuver Philae -- which came to rest with one leg sticking into space -- to make sure the panels can catch the sun and charge its batteries, Bibring told reporters.
Scientists are still trying to determine exactly where the craft put down after bouncing three times."

This sounds precarious.

"Bibring said the first photo image was particularly exciting because it shows "both what man built, the lander, and what nature built, six billion years ago, preserved as it was at that time.""

Ridiculous. And when did the solar system become 6 billion years old. It's only supposed to be 4 billion years old. Neither number has any basis in reality.

"A key question is whether Philae's drill can be used to extract samples from beneath the surface without pushing the lander into space. Gravity on the comet is 1/100,000th that of Earth, meaning the washing machine-sized lander weighs just 1 gram (0.04 ounces) there."

That's what I've been concerned about.

The news keeps getting worse.

"Telemetry indicates it is on a slope or perhaps even on its side.
Certainly, one of its three feet is not in contact with the surface."

If it hadn't hit that cliff face, it would probably have fallen off the comet.

Scientists surprised again.

"It may not be entirely the fault of the machine that Philae didn't stay put. The lander's bounce shows that the comet's surface isn't just a dust field, as expected, but also includes hard surfaces, "which was a surprise to us," Sierks said"

No surprise to electrical universe theorists.

"Philae and Rosetta will use 21 instruments to analyze the comet over the coming months. Scientists hope the $1.62 billion project will help them better understand comets and other celestial objects, as well as possibly answer questions about the origins of life on Earth."

That's a lot of other people's money.

The establishment theory keeps subtly changing.

"Comets are often described as “dirty snowballs”, irregular blocks of ice covered with dust and rocks, but no human craft has ever reached the surface of one before."

I never heard of rocks on comets before. How would primordial dirty snowballs form rocks without temperatures and pressures to do so?

"Magnetic field data from Philae’s ROMAP instrument analysed overnight revealed three “landings”. The first was almost exactly on the expected arrival time of 15:33 GMT. But the anchoring harpoons did not fire and Philae rebounded.
In the weak gravity of the comet it took about two hours for the lander to return to the surface. It touched down for a second time at 17:26 GMT, then bounced again before finally coming to rest at 17:33."

Maybe the harpoons didn't fire because they're pressure sensitive. If they were programmed to fire when hitting a soft surface, but there was no soft surface, then they wouldn't have fired. I bet they were programmed to fire based on an accelerometer, and they never got a reading in the programmed range. Here's how the landing was planned...

"During the last hour of the descent, the lander prepares for the landing. First of all, Philae needs to be able to sense the touch-down on the surface. This is done via detection of a sudden deceleration of the lander motion, not an easy task and in fact the touch-down trigger is expected to come from a motion of the landing gear motor – now operated as a current generator - when it is pushed back into the lander body as soon as the landing tripod gets surface contact. The lander carries also two accelerometers that were installed for exactly the task to sense the touch-down at the surface. However, these devices cannot be switched on, since the fly wheel of the lander 'makes so much noise' that the accelerometers would trigger the touch-down sequence (see below) already during descent and long before the surface is reached. This is bad luck and was certainly not intended, but it became only noticeable during the cruise phase of the Rosetta mission, and after analysis it was clear that nothing can be done about it apart from disabling the accelerometers from their function during descent.

Very likely surface contact will be first by one foot of the landing tripod, then a second one and then the third one. The surface contacts of the tripod will also drill the ice screws of the landing feet (one per foot) into the ground. These screws act like a drill, driven by pure mechanical energy from the touch-down motion of the lander. They help fix the lander to the ground and also prevent lateral motion of the lander during touch-down."

So the accelerometers were turned off, but the compression of the body onto the landing apparatus should have triggered the thruster, then the harpoons. Maybe having the accelerometers turned off prevented that. And apparently the landing screws had no effect.

More Philae propaganda.

"The black-and-white pictures of a rocky surface sent back from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko are the product of an astonishing feat of science and some sophisticated imaging technology."

It was a great feat of engineering, not science. In fact, the failure of science almost doomed the mission. I'll bet the harpoons fired, but they didn't stick.

"But the flow of images may not last. After bouncing twice, scientists say that Philae appears to have landed in the shadow of a cliff and may not be getting enough sunlight to recharge its solar panels."

How can this science writing be so bad?

The propaganda value of the comet mission is great.

"The black-and-white pictures of a rocky surface sent back from a comet hundreds of millions of miles away are the product of an astonishing feat of science and some sophisticated imaging technology."

Somebody plagiarized. Most of the article is plagiarized. Or maybe the same author wrote two similar articles.