Congratulations to the European Space Agency and good luck to Philae
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: July 20, 1969 was the day when history was made — a human stepping on our moon’s surface. Forty-five years after the first manned landing on the moon, this past week, we saw another breathtaking milestone being reached. A robotic probe the size of a domestic washing machine, Philae, managed to land on the icy Comet 67P, some 315 million kilometres away from Earth. The small machine was detached from the larger Rosetta space, which had travelled almost 6.4 billion kilometres since its launch 10 years ago.
It is the desire to learn about how our solar system and life on Earth came into being and to uncover the hidden secrets of the universe of which we are a negligible tiny part, that must have inspired so many scientists, engineers and technicians to achieve this 21st century miracle.
Congratulations to the European Space Agency and good luck to Philae; may it have enough solar energy to keep its battery charged to be able to do its job properly.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, November 16th, 2014.
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