Yes, amazing news, I am waiting for more data to come in to analyze the comet surface and the condition of the lander. This is obviously one the biggest achievement of modern space missions and ESA.
24W is pretty good. More data on the instrumentation onboard can be found in DLR's fact sheet [1]. So I'm guessing if the hardware has survived, we should see some more science data trickling in. Fingers crossed!
Yes, the power is pretty good. The temperature is currently told as -35 degree Celsius. I wonder how fast would the temperature variations be, with respect to the movement of the comet and how the lander with adjust to that.
Also an impressive achievement on the software side of things - no room for showstopper bugs here! It's not quite as simple as taking it offline, deploying some new code and starting it up again.
Is there any information on the processes used to have such a high level of confidence in the software? Lots of simulation? Relatedly, it might also be interesting to see a list of 'known bugs' and ways they've been worked around.
AFAIK it's similar to the processes for avionics software, but with even more attention to detail. This link came up recently on HN in reference to avionics:
Hmm, I am not sure if they would have very sophisticated software on the lander, in the way your thinking. I don't think any processing is done on the lander itself. It might be just primarily used as a remote sensing telemetry system. I suppose the lander would have a lot of power management circuits, some control circuits, sensor-actuator circuits, and transmitter-receiver communication circuitry. There would probably be a RTOS for real-time measurement and actuator motion.
Still, I think someone with specific expertise might give a better answer.
