I was most impressed by the fantastic images starting to come in from the esa Rosetta Mission lander. An amazing achievement.
The first image from the surface – with one of the legs of the lander. Amazing to see the material in close-up – quite different to an old planetary surface. I hope the mass spectrometer works and can tell us what it’s made from. To think that when I was young some people were convinced that comets had no solid nucleus, but were just gas and dust! Can’t wait to see the panoramic images this afternoon. Linked from the esa website.
Addendum – unfortunately Philae had bounced and landed in the shade, so didn’t last long enough to complete its mission. Still amazing to see though.
Here’s an image taken of the comet during the descent, also linked from esa:
