Rosetta space probe finds lost Philae lander on comet

After almost two years hidden in limbo on a comet racing around the sun, the European Space Agency’s Philae lander has finally been found, and just in the nick of time as the search window for the Rosetta spacecraft traveling alongside Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will soon close.

For the past year, it appeared Philae was lost and gone forever – hidden from view and unable to communicate. But this is the first photo of the lander and finally we have closure on the fate of Philae. But as its batteries drained, mission scientists worked hard to collect as much data as possible before the inevitable loss of signal three days later.

Back in 2014, we were all very excited that the ESA had landed a spacecraft on the surface of a comet, but that excitement was tempered with a bit of uncertainty.

However, the experts think knowing where Philae ended up will help them make sense of the data it sent back.

New images downloaded from the Rosetta probe in orbit around the awkwardly named Comet67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko show the long-lost Philae wedged in a crack between some rocks.

Using radio signals sent between Rosetta and Philae, scientists were able to determine that the lander’s location was in a small area just a few hundred feet across on the smaller of the comet’s two lobes.

ESA lost communication with the comet lander after it successfully touched down on the surface of the comet. ESA says Tubiana was the first person to see the images when they were downlinked from Rosetta on Sunday.

The discovery comes just in time, because in three weeks Rosetta will be deliberately crashed into the comet’s surface to “reveal secrets” about the ice ball’s interior structure. After anchoring harpoons on the spacecraft failed to deploy, it made a triple touchdown before skidding to a stop in a shadowy zone.

That hypothesis has proved to be correct, with the image from Rosetta now clearly showing how good Philae really was at hide and seek.

Swiss scientists developed the Rosetta mission’s cameras and spectrometers as part of the ROSINA project (Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis).

Among the invaluable scientific data gathered was the dramatic discovery of 16 “carbon and nitrogen-rich” organic compounds, supporting the theory that the building blocks of life could have been brought to Earth by comets. This gives it the “proper context” it was missing for Philae’s fate, and lets the team shift its attention to photographing Rosetta’s eventual crash site.