The spaceship is named after the Rosetta Stone, an inscribed piece of volcanic rock found in Egypt in 1799 that allowed scientists to decipher hieroglyphics and thus understand the ancient Egyptian culture, ESA said. Shortly after landing was confirmed, the probe tweeted: “Touchdown! My new address: 67P!” Later, it tweeted again: “I’m on the surface but my harpoons did not fire.” ![]() The target comet is only 4 kilometers, or 2.5 miles, in diameter. The lander weighs about 220 pounds and is the size of a domestic washing machine. “Our ambitious Rosetta mission has secured a place in the history books: not only is it the first to rendezvous with and orbit a comet, but it is now also the first to deliver a lander to a comet’s surface,” Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA’s director general, said in a statement.ĮSA lander system engineer Laurence O’Rourke told CNN that the orbiter had to be in the right position to allow the lander craft, which had no thrusters, to “free fall” on the correct trajectory so it landed on the comet. Spacecraft have crashed into comets before, but this was the first controlled landing in history. And that was all that counts.Īnother stunning image of my new home taken by ROLIS during #CometLanding yesterday, when I was just 40 m from #67P /I8OZ5kXjXA- Philae Lander November 13, 2014Ī jubilant Jean-Pierre Bibring, who has reportedly spent more than two decades working on the Rosetta mission, showed photos that scientists were just beginning to receive.ĮSA scientists and executives high-fived and hugged one another when the landing was confirmed on Wednesday. But Philae bounced at least twice, they said, and stuck the landing. There were flaws with the landing – anchoring harpoons didn’t deploy when Philae made impact, lander manager Stephan Ulamec said, and screws meant to burrow into the surface didn’t work. ![]() “What were the conditions like at its infancy and how did it evolve? What role did comets play in this evolution? How do comets work?” “Rosetta is trying to answer the very big questions about the history of our solar system,” said Matt Taylor, ESA Rosetta project scientist. A few who spoke to reporters in Darmstadt, Germany, choked up and said how much the mission – dubbed Rosetta – means to them and to space exploration. Many at the European Space Agency have gone without sleep in the last few days, nervously anticipating whether Philae’s difficult journey would actually end in success. Scientists who pulled off a huge achievement in space exploration showed numerous black-and-white images Thursday of where they think the Philae probe landed on a comet 310 million miles from Earth.
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