Lander bounces onto comet, sends some data before snoozing
With a hop and a skip, a robot called Philae bounded onto comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, perhaps a bit too eager to explore the alien world.
The touchdown on November 12, amid cheers and tears on Earth, marked the first time scientists have set a probe on a comet. But the jubilation was short-lived. Philae’s boisterous bounces landed the robot slightly sideways in the shadow of a cliff, making it impossible for its solar panels to get enough sunlight to recharge its batteries. After about 50 hours of scratching and sniffing 67P’s surface, Philae transmitted its last batch of data and settled in for a long, potentially permanent, sleep.
If all had gone perfectly, Philae would have studied the comet’s surface until March 2015. But the lander’s apparent early retirement didn’t mark the end of the European Space Agency–led mission to get an in-depth look at the 4-kilometer-long hunk of dust and ice (SN Online: 11/13/14). The Rosetta spacecraft (illustration, inset) arrived at the comet on August 6 carrying Philae (SN: 9/6/14, p. 8). The craft is still zooming around 67P, doing its own set of studies, scrutinizing the comet’s hazy atmosphere, snapping images of the surface and trying to pinpoint the lander’s final resting place.