Remember you do not want the orbiter to accidentally hit the comet too, so someone decided 22.5 km was the distance to use.

Yes, it's at 12:40 on this presentation, the comet actually hits the lander, albeit softly. If they did not have the hold down thruster, the harpoons and screws on the legs the lander would bounce away from the comet.

Landing Site Announcement.

Some people need to get out more, if they think The Onion is an actual news site.

The slab cracked during the drilling. Likely they will have to find another thicker slab.

Successful insertion.

Watching the NASA feed, fingers crossed.

NASA TV

Not really, here is a color shot from further back.

No they speed up Rosetta, so it would actually leave the comet, push the lander backwards away from Rosetta, the comet catches up with the lander and it lands. Rosetta in the mean time has to do a slow down maneuver to keep flying along side the comet. Impact with the comet is 1 meter per second, nice and slow.

How accurately can they target the lander ? I know it just floats down due to the comets gravity.

They did not know for sure how long it would take to land, the sequence was loaded weeks beforehand and ran automatically.

Makes sense, unfortunately I missed the telecon, just catching up. Amazing topography ahead.

In the link below it says the route is 100m shorter, it's seems a lot more than 100m to me.

http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/msl/pia18475/

It's hard to remember that the comet does not have 1g of gravity, any second would expect rocks to tumble.

Did ESA not already say some info will be withheld due to the scientists rights to the info to make their discoveries. ESA has it's own and different release policy from NASA/JPL.

In your opinion which part of that is bad news ?

The Rover also has 128 MB of DRAM, which is where the formatting program would run from, so it's independent.

For a weather nut like me, that is awesome .

As long as the drivers use the correct slip safeguards, the likelihood of getting stuck in sand is pretty low, but of course never really zero.

Shouldn't we have a new topic ?, we are past the commissioning phase.

Is going quieter normal, and will it impact the mission ?

From the website

"Note: In fact, this variability in the actual thrust delivered versus what's planned is one of the reasons why the required orbit corrections are being done in a series of smaller burns. Any variation in one burn can be made up in the next, helping the entire process to be more efficient and optimise the use of fuel."

Just saw one bright slow moving meteor fairly low in the sky. Location is NE Florida. It moved SE to NW though which is the opposite direction they are supposed to be coming from.

03:55 One more viewed, this time from Pole Star through Cassiopeia.

I was looking at Yaohua2000's website yesterday and noted the distance was nearly down to 500. Time flies when your having fun.

Oh crumbs he died....

Also a reminder of how hot the Sun is.