Ye Olde Link Digest #1
Ten year old Rosetta gets ready do deploy Comet lander
This absolutely epic comet hunting mission is about to turn another page as Philae is to separate and descend onto to Comet 67P where it will use it’s 27kg worth of scientific instruments to perform analysis of the comet from it’s surface.
And if “catching a comet” doesn’t make you go wow straight away, then make sure you check exactly what it took to get there in these past 10 years - yes, it’s 10 year old hardware.
Anyway, be sure to tune in to the live feed for the separation and descend on and let that jaw drop freely.
And while we’re on the topic, ESA seems to be making an effort on the marketing side of things and these two videos are absolutely a must watch:
Inside the ESA’s Plan To Build the First Moon Base
Keeping with the theme and the agency, ESA showed off a video of their plan to build a Moon base and it is awesome, and relatively simple at that, which is a good sign. It kind of put me in the mind of Earthship housing, but made of the abundant lunar regolith. Watch the video, it’s really cool.
Amazon Echo
Amazon released a new device called Echo, which on the front aims to be a personal assistant that isn’t tied in to your smartphone, in fact, it’s an always-on, voice controlled device that you can drop in your living room and anyone can use. You can ask questions, listen to music and of course, shop from it, or at least build your grocery list
Spyware angle aside - or zero-click buy probable future too - it is intriguing enough, and the kitchen ‘demo’ actually makes a lot of sense, and because you also plug Spotify to it at the very least it’s usage as a wireless speaker is interesting enough to me. I’ll wait for the European price of course, but at this stage, I would definitely like to know more.