Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Philae Lands Successfully On Comet

Posted by Soulskill on from the amazing-job-folks dept.

The European Space Agency has confirmed that the Philae probe has successfully landed on the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and established contact with headquarters. The harpoons have deployed and reeled in the slack, and the landing gear has retracted. (Edit: They're now saying the harpoons didn't fire after all.) There are no photos from the surface yet, but the Rosetta probe snapped this picture of Philae after initial separation, and Philae took this picture of Rosetta. Emily Lakdawalla has a timeline of the operation (cached). She notes that there was a problem with the gas thruster mounted on top of the lander. The purpose of the thruster was to keep the lander on the comet after landing, since there was a very real possibility that it could bounce off. (The comet's local gravity is only about 10^-3 m/s^2.) The pins that were supposed to puncture the wax seal on the jet were unable to do so for reasons unknown. Still, the jet did not seem to be necessary. The official ESA Rosetta site will be continually updating as more data comes back.

7 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Hold on by zerosomething · · Score: 4, Informative

    Harpoon did not fire. https://twitter.com/esaoperati...

    --
    It all starts at 0
    1. Re:Hold on by amicusNYCL · · Score: 4, Informative

      That's what I thought. About 15 minutes ago on the live feed they had someone in the control room say that the harpoons did not fire and that Philae was not anchored to the comet. Hopefully they get it anchored, and hopefully they already got a couple pictures from the descent and landing.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  2. Re:second picture by smooth+wombat · · Score: 5, Informative

    The second picture was taken from the probe itself after it detached. According to the ongoing conference, the picture was taken exactly (their words) 50 seconds after the probe was released.

    The Sun is the bright spot in lower middle. Rosetta itself is in the upper right. Because the probe was spinning when released, there is a slight blurring of the picture.

    --
    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  3. second picture by j-b0y · · Score: 4, Informative

    Rosetta solar panels at the top of the image, with the main body of the probe top right. The sun was causing lots of straylight in the image and it was quite saturated, so they had to do some major fix-up work to get anything sensible, hence the wierdness that you see on the left hand side.

    --
    Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
  4. Links for a quick review of today's Rosetta events by Thanshin · · Score: 5, Informative

    https://twitter.com/Philae_MUP...
    https://twitter.com/Philae2014
    https://twitter.com/esa_rosett...
    http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/

  5. Re:Congratulations! by soccerisgod · · Score: 5, Informative

    The mission in it's entirety, including the planning stage, took around 25 years. Or so they said during the post-landing press conference.

    --
    If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
  6. Re:second picture by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Informative

    Rough crowd tonight.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!