Rosetta Update and Nature's 10 People who mattered this year.

Update to earlier blog post http://lowbrows.blogspot.com/2014/11/rosetta-spacecraft-expected-to-land-on.html ...

The magazine Nature published "365 days: Nature's 10, Ten People who mattered this year." The first of these 10 people was Andrea Accomazzo "A former test pilot steered the Rosetta mission to an icy world in deep space."

The Rosetta mission was the first successful attempt to place a lander on a comet. Some media reports described the mission as a failure. Any media reports of a "failure" completely miss the point.

After bouncing a few times, the lander was firmly on Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko's surface, but in a position where its solar panels will not get any light. So the lander cannot operate as expected. Nevertheless the entire mission has been mostly successful, already resulting in new insights about comets.

The Rosetta spacecraft itself has operated fine, and the lander was able to collect data for a few hours on batteries before it shut itself off due to insufficient power. Mishaps like this happen, and don't necessarily turn a mission into a "failure." Besides there is still a real possibility that the lander will be able to get power over the next few months as the angle of the sun changes.

http://www.nature.com/news/365-days-nature-s-10-1.16562

Among other things the mission returned some beautiful photos. This picture is of the high cliffs on
Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko taken by the Rosetta spacecraft

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141223.html