THE PHILAE LANDER from the Rosetta spacecraft of the European Space Agency (Esa) has arrived – and bounced – on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, generating a big splash of planetary science media coverage. It is still too soon to know what scientific results we will get from the lander, or even if it will wake up when sunlight hits it, possibly in December. In fact, it will take years to digest the data. And after another few decades, other comet missions will come along to fill in the shadows of what Philae missed.The landing occurred right in the middle of the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS), held this year in my new home town of Tucson, Arizona. All the wonderful new science presented at this meeting went by