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Basically, Rosetta has a highly directional antenna, and there was no chance it would still be pointing towards earth after landing. So they programmed it to sw

Basically, Rosetta has a highly directional antenna, and there was no chance it would still be pointing towards earth after landing. So they programmed it to switch off the transmitter on landing to avoid causing interference for other missions. It "crashed" into the comet very slowly, so it was not smashed to pieces. It may be have bounced back and will eventually land somewhere else. We may never know.

david-given 10y ago
As an addendum to that, people might find this interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_15 The tl;dr is that Galaxy 15 is a massive two-tonne geostationary communications satellite around Earth; in 2010 it went mad and started broadcasting hash. It basically became an uncontrolled jammer. It drifted out of its slot in geostationary orbit and started passing near its neighbour satellites, wreaking havoc. Several had to be moved to get them far enough away from Galaxy 15 to prevent interference. Eventually, after about a year, its batteries went flat and it rebooted, and started responding to commands again. After checking out it was put back into its orbital slot and I believe it's still in service today.