Reminiscing about the week of comet landing

This time last year saw the end of an extraordinary week at ESA's European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. Hundreds of journalists and reporters had gathered to witness an historic endeavour as on 12 November 2014 the Rosetta orbiter deployed the lander Philae on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In this blog post, some of our media friends reflect on the events of that memorable week and on one evening in particular. Late in the evening on 14 November, two days after Philae had landed (and bounced) on the comet, three social-media eye witnesses joined a small team of ESA communicators sitting just outside the mission control room at ESOC. Keeping an eye on Philae as it completed its scientific operations, they tweeted live what could have been the lander's final contact with Rosetta. They were Emily Lakdawalla, Chris Lintott and Steven Young, who had been reporting during the week for The Planetary Society's blog, for the BBC’s Sky at Night programme and for the UK's Astronomy Now magazine (and Spaceflight Now website), respectively. One year later, we asked them to join us on a trip down memory lane, piecing together their impressions of that hectic week and, in particular, of that remarkable evening. “I expected it to be similar to the Huygens landing, which I also attended, and it was!” Emily told us. “I was anticipating doing daily blog entries as well as tweeting everything I could. Based on past experience at events like Mars landings, I also expected to be helping other members of the media understand the science and the background behind the mission.” Chris also had been at ESOC for the Huygens landing on Saturn's moon Titan in 2005. “That was thrilling, and the chance to be back for another piece of space history was […]

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