by Jason Snell
Philae lands on a comet
The ESA’s Philae probe, launched from the Rosetta spacecraft, landed on a comet today. (Some great photos here.)
Space is immense and we are very small. What we think of as the world is a thin skin of cool surface above a hot, molten blob, all wrapped in an incredibly thin shell of atmosphere that keeps us alive.
And yet we built a machine that flew 30 light minutes away, launched a probe, and attached it to a chunk of debris that’s been bobbing around since the dawn of the solar system.
Pretty cool.