Congrats ESA!

Philae er nede og snakker selv om den står noe ustøtt. Fantastisk jobb ESA!

 

  This photo from Philae shows the surface during the lander's approach

Gentle Landing For Europe's Philae, But Probe May Not Be Stable On Comet

Nov 12, 2014by Amy Svitak in On Space

PARIS - Europe’s Philae robotic probe touched down on the dusty surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on Nov. 12, marking a historic achievement in planetary exploration.

After a decade-long journey through space to rendezvous with 67P, the Rosetta mission has already racked up a slate of firsts in the fields of flight dynamics and cometary science. Led by the European Space Agency (ESA), today’s landing of a 100-kg (220-lb.) probe marks the crowning achievement in an already stunning exploration campaign.

"We are there, Philae is talking to us, the harpoons fired, there was rebound and the landing gear moved inside, so we are sitting on the surface and Philae is talking to us," said Stephan Ulamec, Philae lander manager at the German Aerospace Center DLR, moments after telemetry confirmed the touchdown. "We are on the comet."

In the next hours "we’ll learn exactly where and how we’ve landed, and we’ll start getting as much science as we can from the surface of this fascinating world," Ulamec said.

However, while the landing appears to have been relatively gentle, ESA says telemetry indicates Philae’s harpoons failed to deploy, and the probe’s position on the comet is not fixed. Mission managers are now weighing a plan to refire the harpoons to give Philae more stable footing.

The landing comes despite a hardware failure discovered by mission managers overnight during pre-deployment checks that left Philae without an active descent system as it touched down on the comet.

As the probe approached the surface, its landing gear was expected to absorb the force of the touchdown as two harpoons locked the lander to the comet’s ashy terrain. At the same time, a thruster atop the lander was supposed to push it down, counteracting the impulse of the harpoons in the opposite direction.

Less than an hour after touchdown ESA confirmed that the cold-gas thrusters designed to counter the harpoon impact failed to ignite.