Philae Image of Comet From 3 km
“The image shows comet 67P/CG acquired by the ROLIS instrument on the Philae lander during descent on Nov 12, 2014 14:38:41 UT from a distance of approximately 3 km from the surface. The landing site is imaged with a resolution of about 3m per pixel.”
Touchdown! Rosetta’s Philae probe lands on comet
“ESA’s Rosetta mission has soft-landed its Philae probe on a comet, the first time in history that such an extraordinary feat has been achieved. After a tense wait during the seven-hour descent to the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the signal confirming the successful touchdown arrived on Earth at 16:03 GMT (17:03 CET).”

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

9 replies on “Philae Has Landed on a Comet”

  1. This is awesome, congrats to ESA and everyone involved, hopefully this is going to capture many kids imaginations and reignite the passion for spaceflight and exploration

  3. From twitter: Jason Davis @jasonrdavis 29m29 minutes ago
    Uh oh. RT @elakdawalla: Wait, belay that last…an update from Cologne says lander is moving….which means it is not stable..

  4. Philae appears to have bounced and returned to the surface. The harpoon anchors do not seem to have fired.

    1. Which will massively limit the amount of science that the lander can do. Possibly the equipment seized up or degraded during the 10-year cold soak.

      1. Once it settled, the ice-screw anchors worked (*), so it should hold now.

        (* Nope, no they didn’t. But apparently the lack of solid anchor only affects two instruments (annoyingly, one is the drill). It’s the lack of power that does the most harm. Perhaps they can use the ice-screws to “jump” until they find a better lit location.)

  5. Maybe they fired but had nothing solid to fire into, from the reports it seems that the surface is composed of very fluffy dust layer.

    1. It’ll be fascinating to find out what actually happened. I guess we’ll get some photo’s from Rosetta from high above to help put the pieces of the puzzle together.

  6. I hope someone has evaluated the following option: move rosetta into a a position where it would reflect light from the sun onto philae.

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