The Dutch are writing History

[pwired]

The Netherlands are writing History.

For the first time in history, a space vehicle has landed on a comet.
This happened today at 16:05 GMT

The project is under Dutch supervision by Fred Jansen.
Landinggear, solarpanels, explorer testing was all done
in the Netherlands.
It took the carrier 10 years, 5 months and 4 days to reach the comet.
The comet has almost no gravity so there was a risc for the explorer
to bounce back after the landing since a pushing thruster failed
to work as also 3 harpoons don't seem to work.
It takes about half an hour for a radio signal to reach the Earth.

But today the explorer has left the carrier and landed successfully
on the comet. The comet has a size of about 3 x 5 kilometer
and is now at a distance of about 500 million kilometers from Earth.

There are many sources where you can find more info
here is one of them:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/11/for-the-first-time-humanity-is-landing-on-a-comet/382664/

[Joss]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/science-environment-29985988

I love this sort of thing

[pwired]

:

Even google.es has adapted it's logo to the event:

More links:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30026398

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/rosetta-mission-spacecraft-makes-historic-landing-on-comet-1.2832076

[Joss]

Live briefing.

The head honcho is giving a press briefing and started by saying, "we have landed, in the right place..... yes, we have got the right comet....!"

[pwired]

[DaveP]

Brilliant - http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page