> Once the rechargeable secondary battery has been warmed by sunlight again, Philae will restart and the DLR LCC team will take their places at the control consoles again.
This is the first I've heard that Philae can wake back up. I was under the impression that it had no solar capabilities whatsoever, and that the battery was the only power it had available.
Mattias Malmer corrected the perspective [0] and I threw it in my JS pano viewer. [1] It helps to visualize where it's sitting.
[0] http://mattias.malmer.nu/2014/11/philae-final-landing-place/ [1] http://robotrising.org/StratoSphere/index.html?src=images/ph...
If the direct output power of the nuclear battery was too low, it could still be used to charge the rechargeable battery until it can make the lander do work again for a few hours/days.
I can't link the source but it was a tweet.
Not every launch makes it to space.
http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2011/11/nasa-confusion-about-ori...
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2009/04/can-watery-asteroids-ex...
Two problems with the 'organic asteroid' theory are the 'racemization problem' (how to explain why life only uses L isomers rather than both the L and D isomers present in meteorites), and the fact that the amount of organic matter in meteors is tiny. Compare that to the opportunities for life to arise on earth in its diverse chemical environments.
See the calculations by Jeffrey Bada discussed in the second link.
Of course, having the reverse isomer molecules would be advantageous against predators (who couldn't digest it) and a boon to natural selection.
Like I said, plenty of speculation to be had.
Besides, paywalls aren't hard to circumvent. Someone usually posts a redirect within minutes of these articles' being linked here.
Have you never attempted to read original scientific papers? Most are hidden behind paywalls. Search for yourself - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gquery/
But then I saw it was published on a ".de" website. You can expect it's targeted at a german audience, who naturally feels interested in knowing which part their country played into this (mentioning others just after wouldn't have hurt, though).
Edit: I opened the article in private mode in both Google Chrome and Firefox browsers so it cannot be related to browser's cache.
Tried other news articles from WSJ website, got the same result i.e. they worked with Google Chrome but not with Firefox browser.
I feel like there is a big difference between finding methane and finding amino acids on the comet. Surely, finding methane isn't all that interesting.
For example, you can read:
In dirty ice like comets: http://www.astrochem.org/sci/Amino_Acids.php
In interestelar clouds: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2003/aug/11/amino-a...
All life we have discovered on earth is based on carbon. So, finding these building blocks of life in space is interesting because it is solid proof you don't need to be on earth to produce them (something that might or might not seem intuitively obvious but in science you can't use intuition as proof, only as a guide). However, while making it a tiny bit more likely, it does not mean anything is alive out there.
Do they have an estimate of when it will be destroyed because it's too close to the sun?
But that does not mean all comets survive their close approach to the Sun. Some, such as the sungrazing comets[0], come quite close to the surface and can be destroyed by their encounters with the Sun.
As jnevill points out, this particular comet's orbit does not take it closer to the Sun than the Earth's distance from the Sun. The comet is on a ~6yr orbit, I believe, and so should survive for a long period of time.
In this case I don't mind an article that has a bit more science bias rather than 'mainstream', so the DLR link is nice.
Some more info here: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/1937.pdf
and: http://sci.esa.int/rosetta/31445-instruments/?fbodylongid=89...
The instrument has its own Twitter feed, of course: https://twitter.com/philae_ptolemy
https://twitter.com/erichand/status/534413817040867328
Edit: Changed Rosetta to COSAC.
