Minders of these machines may spend half a career on an idea they will then cast into the heavens, and wait through what may seem like another half-career for it to reach its destination and send back results. The human-machine bond can be tight. Even no-nonsense scientists and engineers find themselves personalizing such a consuming life experience as well as a trusted machine.

Sometimes, they too are guilty of the transgression they warn laypeople against: anthropomorphism, the attribution of human form and behavior to nonhuman or even inanimate forms. A machine is talking to us. It was shaken up by the three-bounce landing, at last coming to rest near a sheltering rock face (not a choice place, as it prevents sunlight from reaching the lander’s solar panels, which were counted on to charge its batteries). Poor Philae may not have long to live.

What could be more natural than treating the probe in almost human terms when you have spent at least a decade, waking and dreaming, with machinery on which such care is bestowed that it penetrates to your very core? Your dog may or may not be your best friend, and who knows about the cat? But Philae talks to you.

Finding something to relate to is a never-ending struggle for humans, as spacecraft and telescopes draw attention to unworldly realms. Thomas A. Mutch of Brown University was the principal geologist for the Viking missions in 1976 to search for possible life on Mars. When the first Viking landed on Mars and started transmitting pictures of the immediate surface, Dr. Mutch (known to all as Tim) focused his excitement on a single rock near of the craft’s footpads. The rock was red, as was nearly everything around on the russet plain, and so the geologist had something he could relate to. He would deal with the big picture in time.

Reporters don’t always resist the temptation to make homey comparisons of faraway encounters. In 1983, the Pioneer 10 spacecraft crossed the orbit of Pluto. Though it has since been stripped of full planetary standing, Pluto still represents a frontier into a greater unknown. Pioneer had flown by and photographed Jupiter and Saturn and was still going. Writing about this, I kept hearing the rhythm of the Little Engine That Could.