In the new DLR blog entry from Tilman Spohn he's still positiv. Nothing is mentioned about a technical error. The mole itself seems fine. They want to inspect the pit and then hope to drive the mole back in. But how?

Not sure if that was posted before, but there is a very nice Space Science Review Issue about Hayabusa2 from July 2017. It wasn't free at the time I looked at it, but not no longer behind a pay wall. It's a lot of information, several very detailed papers about all the instruments and components. I especially enjoyed the papers about the impactor opration and the deployable camera.

Must read!

https://link.springer.com/journal/11214/208/1/page/1

Edit: hmm, following the link I posted and not the the google link that brought me there, it seems the issue is still behind the paywall. :-( The google link somewhat brought me behind the wall and I can access all the papers. Which is this one: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-017-0338-8 and then click on the issue link to go back to the overview.

Don't think so, thanks for the reminder.

IAC live stream can be followed here: http://www.iafastro.org/iac-2018-live-streaming/ Unfortunately, it costs 20 €.

@Baywa: Are on the show and can tell us what will be presented?

In the press conferences yesterday, it was said, that all data will be downloaded from Hayabusa2 on Friday. Considering, that we got updates nearly every 2 h yesterday from the leading members of the MASCOT team, who were surely occupied otherwise, I think the DLR already did a great job covering the event. Ok, compared to thier performance in this regard on other projects.
Also, JAXA has some nice live coverages, but only with the wide field camera. From all the other instruments, and the MINERVAs, too, the data release is not immediate. We have to remember, which agency does the mission and under what premise. I am not sure about JAXA, but thier main "audience" is Japanese. For Rosetta, ESA was bound by contracts to the very slow release of data that we see now. Maybe not suited for todays culutre, but it was fine at the time the mission was planned. Yes, NASA is very open, but that's how it sees its role in the USA. Concerning the DLR, the culture in Germany is not so much the US view of "tax-payers money, so show the results to the tax-payer", but more state funded research. So the obligation to publicly present the work is far less.

This being said: Where are the images from MASCOT from the surface??

Very nice, those are some big bolders. And again, shadows in the "right" direction makes it so much easier to grasp for my brain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSoEapbchGA

JAXA press conference for MASCOT with english translation.

Indeed. There will be another press conference in 25 min, maybe they tell us more about the expected life time of the battery. I think it is targeted to last at least two sols in the worst case. Also in the grphic from JAXA, end of mission (EOM) is during the third night. Let's hope for the best, and that the DLR team as uploaded a energy saving program for the third night, so MASCOT may have the chance to upload the data in the next morning, if it survives.
Otherwise the last hours in the night without contact are wasted.

The technical reason is the mass constraint. With just 10 kg, solar panels and rechargables are just too heavy. Rechargables and do not have the energy density compared to non-rechargable batteries. Also, the location MASCOT finally settles was unknown, so no sun light guaranteed. And as we have seen with Philae, if the additional power from solar is required for the science goal, this just adds to the risk.

Also interesting: Magentometer team decided to switch off the instrument to safe power, as the have enough data. Let's hope the second sol goes well. The estimate of 16 h battery time probably does not allow for surviving a third night.

https://twitter.com/MASCOT2018/status/1047456139024261121

The team seems very confident in the hopping and uprighting mechanism. The found the first landung spot too dark and unstable, so commanded a first hop at the beginning of the first sol, to begin the science sequence at another location.

Next press conference has a delay but should beginn soon.

I found the press release on youtube (or bto be honest: YT made me find it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tclBmsIh2yo
Although I don't understnd anything, you can see the animated version of one of the slides in the presentation posted above, the simulated formation process. Q&A begins at about min. 20.

@mcmcmc, where did you find that nice explosion gif, or is that yours?

Koen Guerts says in the Twitter video update that OSIRIS made an image series of the landing site to look out for a dust cloud, which might be caused by a movement of Philae.
But still no signals from Philae directly.

JAXA has some videos on youtube showing the trajectory of Akatsuki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INtz0VSKTrU and the longer development until mid January https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-NHNx4AyeY

They also plan a livestream for a press conference on Dec 9th, but I guess without any subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3PFCSi7qPw

Rosetta will attempt to contact Philae in the next days. The DLR posted an interesting article on their page. A signal is expected as early as March 12th, but we would be really lucky.

Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

Hi-res: http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/20...ary_close_flyby

Rosetta has captured its shadow during the 6 km fly by. Resolution is about 11cm/pixel.

More info in german here at the Max Planck Institute, which is in charge for the OSIRIS camera system.

Edit: I missed the link above. But anyways. really cool image of the detail in the Imhotep region. Picture is 228mx228m across. I really hope, the OSIRSI archives are released in a way, that is easyly accessable. When it is released...

Program of a local German TV Station about the search: Was macht eigentlich die Sonde "Philae"? 'What's the probe "Philae" doing?'
Due to some laws in Germany it might be only available online for one week and I hope it's available in general outside of Germany.

Lots of general TV blabla about the mission, but it also features Holger Sierks and two (as they say) unpublished pictures. He says, that they still haven't found it because of the high contrast region where Philae came down.

Fred Goesmann (COSAC PI) is also interviewed, placed right in the middle of the lab, where he supposedly analyses the data: "I have to be careful not to interpret something into the data that I want to see, but is not really there, like staring on a Rorschach Test. Is it a butterfly you see or only an ink mark?" Moreover a deadline for publication of the results at end of January is mentioned. If that's true, this should also apply for the other instruments on Philae. But given the time a review process takes, we should have to wait a little longer for the first publications.

In a short article in a german newspaper from January 2nd, Holger Sierks the PI of the OSIRIS camera system says that Philae could not be found in the images taken in the 20 km orbit.


"Unfortunately, we could not see anything from the lander. Otherwise it would be a nice present for christmas eve."

The recording of the press conference can be seen on ustream.

The link mcgyver posted leads to the archive of the recorded talks at the AGU Fall Meeting last week. Yes, a registration is needed, but it's free and I have never seen free recordings from a scientific conference. As Emily Lakdawalla tweeted, the search word Rosetta gives all Rosetta/Philae related talks in the archive. Until now, 20 are listed: https://virtualoptions.agu.org/search/rosetta

The registration is worth it, for example in the talk from Stefano Mottola about the ROLIS results, all seven ROLIS images of the descent of Philae are shown and the ones from the last landing site with all the colour filters. I haven't seen all talks, some are quite, say "scientific", but what have I expected?
I think it's quite an opportunity to see the talks without attending the conference and without paying the conference fee.

Edit: I see, links to some of the talks and the ROLIS images have been posted in the other thread. (But hearing all the information from the scientists is better than seeing just the pictures.)

live stream of the AGU fall meeting press conference: http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

I'm sure there will also be a recording available once the live stream is over.

As Hayabusa2's arrival at 1999 JU3 is planned for June 2018, PROCYON will make its fly by earlier. In the above mentioned paper by Ozaki et al., all possible target asteroids will be reached mid to end of 2016.
The paper was written prior to the launch and as the launch day was not clear, the target asteroid was not selected. Table nr. 4 on page 9 of the paper lists some of the target astroids, of which all require an earth gravity assist. The ones that can be reached directly in a shorter time result in a too short phase of only about one day where the probe can steer by optical navigation. This time sould be more than 3 days, which is only possible for the asteroids reached by the gavity assist scenario.

So we will know the exact fly by date, when the asteroid will be selected and announced by JAXA.

Can't even edit my post, already a new thread

What I wanted to add:

I somehow miss the LAICA camera system in all PROCYON images and articles. It only shows in some functional block diagrams. Was the "Observation of Geocorona using Lyman Alpha Imaging CAmera" just a proposal, or is it on board the spacecraft? I wonders, since the observation time is said to be 1-2 weeks afer launch in the ppt presentation translated by pandaneko. Thanks btw.

Some other good articles about PROCYON on spaceflight101 (also about ArtSat and Shin'en2) and very extensive one on eoPortal Directory, but all are missing LAICA.

Maybe PROCYON soon needs its own thread.
Next to the JAXA press release, already mentioned above in the spacedaily article, it also has a facebook page.

Some posts are in english, but goole translate helped me with the interesing other statements the last days, that the three-axis attitude control system was successfully tested by starting the RCS. The post is illustrated with some nice ASCII art that shows housekeeping data.

The last post shows the calibration test for the attitude control, with an initial "oversteering" of a deliberate change of 10° from the sun orientation and then as google translate says: "I was able to direct the clean attitude of goal without having to vibration as "After" in Figure!!!" Picture here.

I think it's really nice to have such direct reports from the team and the spacecraft. I remember that from other japanese missions, like the blog from the IKAROS mission.

Short reminder: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2nhh...ers_working_on/ Reddit AmA starts in 10min. The following persons are there to answer the questions:

Michael F. A'Hearn - Astronomy Professor (emeritus) and Principal Investigator of the Deep Impact mission (ma)
Claudia Faber - Rosetta SESAME Team, DLR-PF/Berlin (cf)
Stubbe Hviid - Co-Investigator of the OSIRIS camera on Rosetta at DLR-PF/Berlin (sh)
Horst Uwe Keller - Comet Scientist (emeritus), DLR-PF/Berlin and IGEP TU Braunschweig (uk)
Martin Knapmeyer - Co-Investigator of the SESAME Experiment at DLR-PF Berlin (mk)
Ekkehard Kührt - Science Manager for Rosetta at DLR-PF/Berlin (ek)
Michael Maibaum - Philae System Engineer and Deputy Operations Manager at DLR/Cologne (mm)
Ivanka Pelivan - MUPUS Co-Investigator and ROLIS team member (operations) at DLR-PF/Berlin (ip)
Stephan Ulamec - Manager of the Philae Lander project at DLR/Cologne (su)

Tomorrow, Nov. 26th, 11 am reddit time (which is Eastern Time I think) or 17:00 CET, there will be a Reddit AmA (Ask me Anything) with the Philae and Instruments team from the DLR (German Aerospace Center) in the subreddit http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/

Here the announcement tweet from the DLR.