This was one of the more fun sciencey things to keep track of, and it brought space back into the media for a short time. Godspeed lil' probe.<p>Anyway, I kind of wish people would edit this style of title to something like "It's time for me (Philae Lander) to say goodbye"
"Was I a good probe? I know that I didn't quite stick the landing, but everything turned out all right in the end... right? That's all I ever wanted."
Its heart breaking to see these missions come to an end though they are all planned only for a few weeks in the first place. I m really glad that Philae came along this far , this was a really really complicated mission - Right from soft landing on the comet nucleus( remember the previous attempts in getting to a comet were impact probes) , loosing that one thruster prior to detaching from Rosetta , having troubles with primary & second batteries , going into safe mode , hibernating and re-awaking again , constant absence of sunlight to recharge batteries and all the delay in receiving signals back from Rosetta - This must have been one heck of an emotional ride for all the involved engineers and scientists. Mad Respect !<p>I m not sure if Philae conducted all the originally planned experiments or not , Would love for someone to comment on that.<p>And I love what message they had in the final video update, - now that they shut down the communication module of Rosetta that would talk to Philae - all those power would be used to conduct other experiments ! They managed to throw in some positivity there.
And now it has been turned off, here is a video they made: <a href="https://twitter.com/DLR_en/status/758341091070476290" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/DLR_en/status/758341091070476290</a>
I thought the Philae lander was incommunicado anyway because it landed in shadow and its batteries ran down. Shutting off the system which is supposed to communicate with it doesn't really seem like a milestone.