• published: 13 Nov 2014
• views: 97

After 10 years of waiting, the European Space Agency just landed on a comet Rosetta mission's landing site on Comet 67P may lead to power problems After a historic but awkward comet landing, the robot probe Philae is now stable and sending pictures - but there are concerns about its battery life. After two bounces, the first one about 1km back out into space, the lander settled in the shadow of a cliff, 1km from its target site. It may be problematic to get enough sunlight to charge its batteries. Launched in 2004, the European Space Agency (Esa) mission hopes to learn about the origins of our Solar System. It has already sent back the first images ever taken on the surface of a comet. After showing an image that indicates Philae's location - on the far side of a large crater that was considered but rejected as a landing site - the head of the lander team Stefan Ulamec said: "We could be somewhere in the rim of this crater, which could explain this bizarre… orientation that you have seen." Figuring out the orientation and location is a difficult task, he said. "I can't really give you much more than you interpret yourself from looking at these beautiful images." But the team is continuing to receive "great data" from several different instruments on board Philae. Esa's Rosetta satellite carried Philae on a 6.4 billion-km (4bn-mile) journey to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. These show the feet of the lander and the wider cometscape. One of the three feet is not in contact with the ground. Philae is stable now, but there is still concern about the longer-term situation because the probe is not properly anchored - the harpoons that should have hooked it into the surface did not fire on contact. Neither did its feet screws get any purchase. Lander project manager Stephan Ulamec told the BBC that he was very wary of now commanding the harpoons to fire, as this could throw Philae back off into space. He also has worries about drilling into the comet to get samples for analysis because this too could affect the overall stability of the lander. "We are still not anchored," he said. "We are sitting with the weight of the lander somehow on the comet. We are pretty sure where we landed the first time, and then we made quite a leap. Some people say it is in the order of 1 km high. "And then we had another small leap, and now we are sitting there, and transmitting, and everything else is something we have to start understanding and keep interpreting." Grey line David Shukman, BBC science editor Touching down on a comet is mind-blowing in itself, but try picturing how the tiny Philae lander has then bounced around its new home. From what we know, the lander rose hundreds of metres above the surface at one stage and remained in flight for nearly two hours. One might say it was airborne, except that the comet has no air. In any event, it may have risen vertically or drifted sideways - we should hear later. Either way, while Philae was off the surface, the comet will have rotated beneath it. Each rotation takes about 12 hours which means the lander may effectively travelled across one-sixth of the comet's surface. By the time it came down again, the original landing zone - chosen for its relative safety and ideal amount of sunshine - was left far behind. The lander is now in different, undetermined area that may prove far more hazardous. The first picture is confusing, but suggests Philae is sitting at an angle. Everyone here is hungry for more news. Another issue being assessed is the amount of sunlight available to Philae. The probe left Rosetta with 60-plus hours of battery life, and will need at some point to charge up with its solar panels. But early reports indicate that in its present position, the robot is receiving only one-and-a-half hours of sunlight during every 12-hour rotation of the comet. This will not be enough to sustain operations. As a consequence, controllers here are discussing using one of Philae's deployable instruments to try to launch the probe upwards and away to a better location. But this would be a last-resort option. The Royal Mail is commemorating the landing with a special postmark, which will be applied to all mail delivered across the UK from Friday to Saturday First, the team really needs to fully understand where Philae is on the surface and what lies around it. Holger Sierks, the principal investigator of the science cameras on Philae's mothership, Rosetta, which is circling the comet overhead, said his team was now trying to take pictures of the robot on the surface. These pictures will show very little detail because Rosetta is many tens of kilometres away, but they will help pinpoint the place the little probe came to rest after its bouncing. European Space Agency releases first picture from comet surface In a first for humanity, a spacecraft just touched down on a comet.