COMETS

Is anybody else excited by the success of the Rosetta mission? Many years ago, it set off from Earth with the aim of planting a robot on the comet 67P. Yesterday it succeeded, when the robot Philae landed on the comet. Apparently it had some problems, bouncing off the surface during its first attempt before landing shortly afterwards. But hey, let's not be churlish; aircraft often bounce off runways, and they are controlled by pilots, not some space nerd some 510 million km away.

This is like the first moon mission, back in the late 1960's. An impressive demonstration of mankind's collective ingenuity.

Walter Blotscher