It was one year ago today that the Philae Lander bounced , spun , and tumbled across the airfoil of Comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko . To commemorate the historical event , the European Space Agency has released an reanimate video chronicle the lander ’s chaotic landing .
To tack together the detail of the Philae landing place , the ESA has drop the better part of a year analyzing the data pick up from an assortment of instrument and sensors . This projection is name it possible for mission scientists to understand what happened on that day , and to employ that noesis to considerably understand the composition and structure of Comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko .
After severalise from the Rosetta mothership , Philae ventured slowly down to the open . After its seven - hour descent , it made touchdown on a smear dubbed Agilkia . Its legs sunk to a deepness of about 0.82 infantry ( a quartern meter ) , bespeak that it had made contact on a soft , granular aerofoil . When it finally hit solid primer coat , the lander bounced back up into space for nearly two hour . Philae in the end settled down at a spot scream Abydos , but not after another two bounces and a collision , possibly with a rim volcanic crater .
Analysis also showed that Philae record into quite a spill during its journey across the comet .
“ The subsequent contact of the tumbling Philae with the aerofoil at the 2d touchdown was the most critical one , ” noted Rosetta deputation scientist Hans - Ulrich Auster in an ESArelease . “ The lander made contact with the control surface and Philae left the comet again , command by the two legs to the left and to the right of the balcony and performed a last rotation , a feebleminded roll , about the lander Y - axis . ”
Remarkably , Philae ’s impulse was enough to correct the lander up onto its legs again and eventually into its final resting perspective .
“ With hindsight , one year later , and watching the movie , I am astonished how lucky we were , ” allege Jens Biele , the trail author ofthe first scientific paperassociating the lander ’s impacts to the comet ’s open prop . “ But we watch a bunch about the surface mechanical prop from these bounce , and Philae in the end bring down in an interesting terrain where we would have never dare to land in the first place . ”
[ ESA ]
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