The Probe--By Terry O’Leary--France

The Probe

The scientists flung the Rosetta
like spinning a ball in rouletta.
The nerds were annoyed
when their progeny buoyed.
All was saved with a back turbojeta

Settling down on an icy ast'roid,
which was neither oblong nor spheroid,
they said "Philae be grounded",
instead she rebounded
and almost was lost in the void.

With parties and money misdealt
the project was left needing gelt.
And cells lacking power
sent nerds to the shower
while watching the meteor melt.

Author’s note--I wrote these limericks about the space probe, Philae, that recently landed (after 10 years in flight! traversing over 6 billion miles) on the comet 67P/Churyumove-Gerasimenko. The probe (weighing about 200 pounds) was carried by the Rosetta spacecraft (about 6000 pounds) and landed on the distorted rugby-ball shaped comet (a stone, about 2.5 miles in diameter, weighing about 20 trillion pounds), the comet traveling at over 40 000 miles per hour....

Terry O’Leary defines himself as "A physicist lacking gravity...".