Lander manager says Philae is doing well but battery life is low

An international fleet of five Mars orbiters and two rovers will have ringside seats when a mountain-size comet streaks by on Oct. 19, passing within a scant 87,000 miles of the red planet at a blistering 126,000 mph.

A fleet of robotic spacecraft orbiting Mars got a front row seat to space history and lived to tell about it, giving scientists their first close-up look at a comet fresh from a cloud of primordial mini-worlds at the outer reaches of the solar system.

Research teams across Europe spent the last half-year meticulously going through a wish list of experiments for the Philae comet lander without knowing whether they would ever get a chance to execute the tasks.