The quest to find Philae

Rosetta and Philae teams continue to search for the current location of the lander, piecing together clues from its unexpected flight over the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after its initial landing on 12 November. While Rosetta continues to study the ever-changing comet from a distance, the mission teams have been trying to narrow down the location of Philae on the comet nucleus using a variety of data, including imaging, magnetic field, and radio wave measurements. Philae first touched down at the Agilkia landing site on the head of Comet 67P/C-G at 15:34 GMT on 12 November 2014, confirmation arriving back at Earth via Rosetta 28 minutes later. Unfortunately Philae’s harpoons did not deploy and the ice screws alone proved insufficient to secure the lander at Agilkia. As a result, the lander rebounded for an additional two-hour flight before finally coming to rest at a site now known as Abydos. Both Rosetta’s navigation camera and the high-resolution OSIRIS camera successfully identified the first touchdown point, with Philae’s down-looking ROLIS camera providing high-resolution views of the location  from as close as 9 metres altitude. The bouncing lander was then identified in OSIRIS  and NAVCAM images shortly after it had left Agilkia. Somewhat later, another OSIRIS image was thought to show Philae above the horizon of the large depression known as Hatmehit  on the comet’s head. Magnetic field measurements from Philae’s ROMAP provided further details on subsequent events as the lander flew above the comet, including precise timing of the various contact points. Initially, the lander flew in a stable orientation, but is then thought to have struck a surface feature at 16:20 GMT, after which it tumbled. A third touchdown occurred at 17:25 GMT, followed by a much shorter bounce of just a few minutes, before Philae finally arrived at Abydos at […]

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