Philae lands and tweets!

We take a break from our earnings and conference coverage for a space update: Rosetta’s little Philae probe has landed! Philae sent back this picture, taken from a height of 3 km just before it landed at around 11AM ET: All sorts of cool images and video are here: http://new.livestream.com/esa/cometlanding and http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta. It’s possible that this wasn’t the smooth landing everyone was looking for. CNN says the lander may have bounced — but it doesn’t seem to matter, since Philae is sending data. In fact, the lander is tweeting: I probably would have taken a nap after such a dramatic arrival, but whatever. If Philae wants to tweet, I’ll tune in. Why does this landing matter? If we can learn what makes up a comet and how it interacts with solar wind, we can refine our models about the formation of the universe. But it’s even better than that: Because comets apparently pose tough engineering challenges: very low gravity; composed of ice, dust and rocks; irregular shapes; hard to predict. A ten year journey to a tiny dot in space. Even if the landing bounced, this judge gives it a 10. W00t! Top image courtesy of ESA; bottom is a screen capture of Philae’s twitter account. Not sure how to assign rights to that … If you know, tell me and I’ll fix.