The sound of touchdown

Sensors in the feet of Rosetta’s lander Philae have recorded the sound of touchdown as it first came into contact with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The instrument, SESAME-CASSE, was turned on during the descent and clearly registered the first touchdown as Philae came into contact with the comet, in the form of vibrations detected in the soles of the lander’s feet. Image credit: ESA/ATG medialab – Audio file credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/SESAME/DLR - USAGE: This file is copyright protected and is NOT now available under any CC licensing. It may be used only for non-profit, education or personal use. For any other use, please contact DLR, Institute of Planetary Research, Asteroids and Comets, Berlin, Klaus Seidensticker. Note that this is an actual sound file; i.e. it is a recording of mechanical vibrations at acoustic frequencies. No modification was necessary except for some technical adjustments (e.g. the .wav format requires amplitude normalisation). Actual frequency content and duration are unchanged. SESAME is the lander’s Surface Electrical Sounding and Acoustic Monitoring Experiment, and comprises three suites of instruments: CASSE – the Comet Acoustic Surface Sounding Experiment, which allows mechanical parameters of the surface to be deduced, along with details of the structure of the subsurface; DIM – the Dust Impact Monitor, which measures properties of impacting comet grains; PP – the Permittivity Probe, which determines one of the key electrical properties of the material beneath Philae, which is linked to the water ice content of the surface. Klaus Seidensticker from the DLR Institute of Planetary Research says: “Our data record the first touchdown and show that Philae’s feet first penetrated a soft surface layer – possibly a dust layer – several centimetres thick until they hit a hard surface – probably a sintered ice-dust layer – a few milliseconds later.” Data from the SESAME-DIM instrument meanwhile suggest […]



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