I'm usually awake at those times
Although, I'm not desperate, come now. And the weather is horrid past few days, cold and rainy

must be true because you posted this earlier than 5am - disgusting habit

yeah, i have to agree the weather is too cold for spring
at noon a system from the antarctic (!) moved in and the temperature dropped by around 10 degrees (C)

here have a link showing what the lander's instrumentation is supposed to do: http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2014/09/Philae_s_descent_and_science_on_the_surface

the nominated landing site is J on the smaller lobe:



Context image showing the location of the primary landing site for Rosetta’s lander Philae.
Site J is located on the head of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. An inset showing a close up of the landing site is also shown. The inset image was taken by Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on 20 August 2014 from a distance of about 67 km. The image scale is 1.2 metres/pixel. The background image was taken on 16 August from a distance of about 100 km. The comet nucleus is about 4 km across.
The primary landing site was chosen from five candidates during the Landing Site Selection Group meeting held on 13–14 September 2014.

and the backup is C:



now the team(s) will work flat out under the assumption that landing site J is a go
the final go/no-go decision will be made on october 14th
should landing site J be a no-go then the landing will have to postponed by up to 4 weeks

btw, prior to launching rosetta a risk analysis was made which established a ~75% chance that the landing would be successful
while the comet's shape provides extra challenges there will be no new risk analysis, not worth it - resources are needed for other work
and another question which might be on everyone's mind was also answered:

why is there not a more substantial flow of images and other information?
the resources on rosetta are limited and the various instruments are currently mainly used for navigation and landing preparation

here two articles published after the press conference:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2014/sep/15/rosetta-philae-lander-comet-tail
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/rosetta-probe-s-landing-site-on-comet-67p-churyumov-gerasimenko-picked-1.2766361
(this second has a nice summary of the mission at the end)

and here two close up images of the landing site J:



The image was taken by Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on 20 August 2014 from a distance of about 67 km. The image scale is 1.2 metres/pixel.
Site J offers the minimum risk to the lander in comparison to the other candidate sites, and is also scientifically interesting, with signs of activity nearby. At Site J, the majority of slopes are less than 30º relative to the local vertical, reducing the chances of Philae toppling over during touchdown. Site J also appears to have relatively few boulders and receives sufficient daily illumination to recharge Philae and continue science operations on the surface beyond the initial battery-powered phase.



This anaglyph image of Philae’s primary landing site on the ‘head’ of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko can be viewed using stereoscopic glasses with red–green/blue filters.
The two images used to make the anaglyph were taken on 26 August 2014 from a distance of 48 km with Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera. The image scale is 0.96 metres/pixel.

Thanks for all the updates in this thread

I watched the press conference. It was nice, some good questions asked, although I believe none was needed cause they answered like every single question ppl could ask, lol.

Then there was a women, who was given 1 question (like the rest of them), she asked like 50 questions lmao... I loved how Jean-Pierre answered her though, was epic Imo.

thx for the feedback



yes, was nice to hear a few people who have a stronger accent than i do
watched most of it but was distracted by the dog a few times
(btw, you working night or late evening shifts? being up at this hour in canada that is)

stumbled across an older article when i was looking for something else -> http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/08/04/4057060.htm
probably not worth reading for most of it now but a few words might be worth quoting for those who do not know:

Comets are older than the solar system itself — frozen leftovers of the same primordial dust and gas from which the Sun and planets formed. To study the composition of a comet is to glimpse back more than 4.6 billion years in time and chemistry. ... The ... mission will study and image the comet, analyse the gases that boil off ... revealing the chemical composition of the gaseous nebula that became our corner of the universe. That information could help answer the question of whether comets seeded our planet with water and amino acids, letting life take hold here on Earth.

and here a link to another article covering some of the stuff from the press conference -> http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/38343-rosetta-probe-philae-to/

Haha, ya, I think 1 or 2 of them had a "normal" american accent. Even when I speak to friends, they pick up that I'm not truely canadian.
(I've havn't and won't answer this publicly. Only a handfull of ppl from D2Jsp know fully about my RL status)

That press conference though, I learned alot from it. Things I either didn't read anywhere or forgot about lol.
Still, if the landing is a success, I honestly believe it will end up becoming a huge leap of knowledge. About alot of unanswered/theorized questions science and life has had to this point in time.
Much bigger than the whole, landing on the moon fiasco.
Although this ofc goes for all public science missions, this one surely takes 1st place. Can't include the secret ones.

You know where I can find a link to this?

what is "normal" about an american accent?
here one doesn't hear an american accent that often from real people (ie not tv,radio or movies)
but apart from the odd tourist all those with a proper american accent do not want to return to the states



embedding the url does not work, so you have to open this link - video is about one and a half hours long:
http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2014/09/Replay_Rosetta_landing_site_announcement