Mission
Philae's mission is to land successfully on the surface of a comet, and transmit data from the surface about the comet's composition. Unlike the Deep Impact probe, it is not an impactor. A check of the instruments indicated no major problems in 2006. Some of the instruments and the lander were used for the first time as autonomous systems during the Mars flyby on February 25, 2007. ÇIVA, the camera system, returned some images while the Rosetta instruments were powered down; ROMAP took measurements of the Martian magnetosphere. Most of the other instruments need contact with the surface for analysis and stayed offline during the flyby.
Read more about this topic: Philae (spacecraft)
Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story—a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“I am succeeding quite well in my work and the future looks well. What special mission is God preparing me for? Cutting off all earthly ties and isolating me as it were.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
“When you’re dealing with monkeys, you’ve got to expect some wrenches.”
—Alvah Bessie, Ranald MacDougall, and Lester Cole. Raoul Walsh. Captain Nelson, Objective Burma, giving a subaltern a mission (1945)