[qume]

If they were to commit resources to this situation, a simple, tiny, low power radio beacon would be an option.

Rather than search for it, let it tell Rosetta where it is.

The problem with this is that even though the beacon could be only a few grams and use micro-watts (1 milliwatt transmission 1/1000th of the time?) of energy, Rosetta would need a receiver capable of picking it up.

I assume Rosetta has something like software defined radio but due to when it was designed, not sure if this is the case. In any case Rosetta is loaded with really sophisticated radio gear probably it could be build such that there is no weight or energy penalty for this.

Wish more NASA folk would read hacker news and could chime in

[gjulianm]

It seems that the beacon is not necessary. They already have radio localization. The problem is confirmation from imagery.

> Radio ranging data tied its location down to an area spanning a few tens of metres, but a number of potential candidate objects identified in relatively low-resolution images taken from larger distances could not be analysed in detail until recently.

[qume]

Ah hah... good spotting. Using radio to locate down to 10's of meters is a heck of an achievement. Makes me wonder how many other amazing things are hidden under the surface of this effort that are similarly amazing but don't see the light of day.