ESA releases pictures of Philae probe’s comet landing location

Scientests claim these photographs provide strong indication that Philae touched down for the first time almost precisely where intended. Photograph: AP

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released images taken by the Rosetta orbiter that reveal the location of the Philae probe on the surface of the comet 67P.

The larger circle on the left reveals the dust cloud created when the probe first touched down on the comet on Wednesday. A mechanism intended to anchor the craft to the surface failed and it then bounced back into space due to the comet’s weak gravity. The first bounce took it high over the comet, but there was never a risk of it vanishing into space. The comet’s gravity is 100,000th that of the Earth, making the 100 kilogram lander weigh no more than a gram, but even that was enough to pull it back down.

It then settled a short distance from the original landing point on the comet, which is 311m miles (500m km) from earth. The probe is the first of the two smaller circles on the right, with its shadow below.

The European Space Agency’s images were recorded by the navigation camera on board Rosetta as the orbiter flew over the (intended) Philae landing site on 12 November. Photograph: EPA

The ESA paid tribute to Gabriele Bellei, of the flight dynamics division, who spent hours searching the images from Rosetta for evidence of the landing. His colleague, Mikel Canania, then confirmed the findings.

Philae has gone into hibernation mode after running low on power. The probe’s final resting spot in the shadow of a cliff has meant that insufficient sunlight reached the solar panels that should be recharging its batteries. It still managed to transmit all of its data before running out of power.

In a bid to move the solar panels out of the shade, the lander was raised by 1.5 inches (4cm) on Friday and rotated about 35 degrees. It is still unclear whether the manoeuvre has been successful.
Paolo Ferri, ESA’s mission chief, said on Saturday: “We don’t know if the charge will ever be high enough to operate the lander again. It is highly unlikely that we will establish any kind of communication any time soon.”

The agency said on Sunday that most of its scientists were taking the chance to catch up on sleep after working around the clock for the past four days.

However, some were still evaluating the data that Philae sent before going into sleep mode, spokeswoman Jocelyn Landeau-Constantin said.