After the "Extreme Sports Tumble Drying Club" admitted its clandestine sponsorship of the Rosetta "on comet" space clothes drying mission, the mission ground to a halt yesterday. The Rosetta spacecraft's landing module, Philae, a $2m black bodywork pimped tumble drier, has come out of hiding now that the orbiter craft, Rosetta refuses to go along with any more "childish" games.
A series of programed games was initiated by a landing related malfunction and the European mission control staff have just realised that a game of hide and seek had been triggered off. Additionally the lander has been spotted depleting its batteries by secretly drying clothes on a 'full load anti-crease' setting for 12 hours. The tumble drier has an automatically extending clothes line with it, but this failed to deploy on landing. Scientists have now re-programed all drying cycles to economy mode irrespective of dial position.
Some clothes pegs, a handful of small change and a (now ruined) Hershey bar have been identified by mission control as the cause of a worrying 10 year long rattling noise.
