Philae Historic First Landing on a Comet

Philae's descent via NASA

Image Credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/DLR

"This image of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko was taken by the Philae lander of the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission during Philae's descent toward the comet on Nov. 12, 2014. Philae's ROLIS camera took the image from a distance of approximately two miles (three kilometers) from the surface.

After more than a decade traveling through space, a robotic lander built by the European Space Agency has made the first-ever soft landing of a spacecraft on a comet.
Mission controllers at ESA's mission operations center in Darmstadt, Germany, received a signal confirming that the Philae lander had touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Wednesday, Nov. 12, just after 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST.

A statement about Rosetta from John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, is online at: http://go.nasa.gov/1u2fQZE"

Left: earlier image of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko prior to today's landing.



"Rosetta’s Plasma Consortium (RPC) has uncovered a mysterious ‘song’ that Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is singing into space. The comet seems to be emitting a ‘song’ in the form of oscillations in the magnetic field in the comet’s environment. It is being sung at 40-50 millihertz, far below human hearing, which typically picks up sound between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. To make the music audible to the human ear, the frequencies have been increased in this recording. Thumbnail image credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0"

Update 11/13/14: image from Philae at landing site.



"This mosaic comprises four individual NAVCAM images taken from 31.8 km from the centre of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 4 November 2014. The image resolution is 2.7 m/pixel and thus each original 1024 x 1024 pixel frame measured 2.8 km across. The mosaic has been slightly rotated and cropped, and measures roughly 4.6 x 3.8 km.

Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO"