Images from Philae's onboard camera

[Jonk]

@elakdawalla 

The sun will rise on Philae around 6:00 am UTC. It is theoretically possible it could wake up then. Next comm pass would be at around 11:00.

Ulamec is positively elated about how much data came out of this last pass. Last CONSERT ranging will allow them to triangulate landing site.

[trynda1701]

Still got Saturday to work thru, whatever happens, and then we'll see what is shown on the Sky at Night programme. The programme makers are gonna have a lot to edit into it. Must remember to tape it! Anyone know how long and when it's on, not next to the TV just now.

Mark

[Altitude]

We have to remember they're using 10 years old technology on board of the probe... Imagine if the Appolo Moon mission would be done ten years later. How different it would be? Ten years is a HUGE time span for a modern technology.

It's just amazing that we can lunch and land on the object so small and so far away and see how it looks like meters away.

Bravo and Thank you to all who was involved! Good job!

[alan potts]

Ten years is a long time, now ten weeks is a long time.

Well done all you data and info uploaders, I only found out about this the other day.

Alan

[Jonk]

Latest from ESA this morning:

Philae's first touchdown seen by Rosetta's NavCam

15 November 2014

Rosetta’s lander has completed its primary science mission after nearly 57 hours on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

After being out of communication visibility with the lander since 09:58 GMT / 10:58 CET on Friday, Rosetta regained contact with Philae at 22:19 GMT /23:19 CET last night. The signal was initially intermittent, but quickly stabilised and remained very good until 00:36 GMT / 01:36 CET this morning. 

In that time, the lander returned all of its housekeeping data, as well as science data from the targeted instruments, including ROLIS, COSAC, Ptolemy, SD2 and CONSERT. This completed the measurements planned for the final block of experiments on the surface.

First comet panoramic

In addition, the lander’s body was lifted by about 4 cm and rotated about 35° in an attempt to receive more solar energy. But as the last science data fed back to Earth, Philae’s power rapidly depleted.

“It has been a huge success, the whole team is delighted,” said Stephan Ulamec, lander manager at the DLR German Aerospace Agency, who monitored Philae’s progress from ESA’s Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, this week.

“Despite the unplanned series of three touchdowns, all of our instruments could be operated and now it’s time to see what we’ve got.”

Against the odds – with no downwards thruster and with the automated harpoon system not having worked – Philae bounced twice after its first touchdown on the comet, coming to rest in the shadow of a cliff on Wednesday 12 November at 17:32 GMT (comet time – it takes over 28 minutes for the signal to reach Earth, via Rosetta).

Philae’s instruments

The search for Philae’s final landing site continues, with high-resolution images from the orbiter being closely scrutinised. Meanwhile, the lander has returned unprecedented images of its surroundings.

While descent images show that the surface of the comet is covered by dust and debris ranging from millimetre to metre sizes, panoramic images show layered walls of harder-looking material.  The science teams are now studying their data to see if they have sampled any of this material with Philae’s drill

“We still hope that at a later stage of the mission, perhaps when we are nearer to the Sun, that we might have enough solar illumination to wake up the lander and re-establish communication, ” added Stephan.

From now on, no contact will be possible unless sufficient sunlight falls on the solar panels to generate enough power to wake it up. The possibility that this may happen later in the mission was boosted when mission controllers sent commands to rotate the lander’s main body with its fixed solar panels. This should have exposed more panel area to sunlight.

Rosetta’s trajectory after 12 November

The next possible communication slot begins on 15 November at about 10:00 GMT / 11:00 CET. The orbiter will listen for a signal, and will continue doing so each time its orbit brings it into line-of-sight visibility with Philae. However, given the low recharge current coming from the solar panels at this time, it is unlikely that contact will be re-established with the lander in the near future.

Meanwhile, the Rosetta orbiter has been moving back into a 30 km orbit around the comet.

It will return to a 20 km orbit on 6 December and continue its mission to study the body in great detail as the comet becomes more active, en route to its closest encounter with the Sun on 13 August next year.  

Over the coming months, Rosetta will start to fly in more distant ‘unbound’ orbits, while performing a series of daring flybys past the comet, some within just 8 km of its centre.

Data collected by the orbiter will allow scientists to watch the short- and long-term changes that take place on the comet, helping to answer some of the biggest and most important questions regarding the history of our Solar System. How did it form and evolve?  How do comets work? What role did comets play in the evolution of the planets, of water on the Earth, and perhaps even of life on our home world.

“The data collected by Philae and Rosetta is set to make this mission a game-changer in cometary science,” says Matt Taylor, ESA’s Rosetta project scientist.

Fred Jansen, ESA’s Rosetta mission manager, says, “At the end of this amazing rollercoaster week, we look back on a successful first-ever soft-landing on a comet. This was a truly historic moment for ESA and its partners. We now look forward to many more months of exciting Rosetta science and possibly a return of Philae from hibernation at some point in time.”

[Stu]

We have to remember they're using 10 years old technology on board of the probe... Imagine if the Appolo Moon mission would be done ten years later. How different it would be? Ten years is a HUGE time span for a modern technology.

It's just amazing that we can lunch and land on the object so small and so far away and see how it looks like meters away.

Bravo and Thank you to all who was involved! Good job!

I agree completely, but would suspect the technology is more like 20 to 25 years old. The project will have been designed way before launch and they will have needed to use reliable technology available at the time. An amazing achievement.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[tich]

I think its been a great achievement & I'm looking forward to hearing more about the results they have gathered, I've just came across these 2 colour pictures on FB







 

[Jonk]

Nice if that is genuine...nothing else been released by ESA today yet.

Still waiting but they will come.

[tich]

I just done a search on Google & found this which shows 2 of the pictures I've posted although like you say there's nothing from ESA as yet.

[Laurie61]

I just done a search on Google & found this which shows 2 of the pictures I've posted although like you say there's nothing from ESA as yet.

Info on the images suggest they were taken by Rosetta's osiris/ nav cams.  

[Treeden]

... and then we'll see what is shown on the Sky at Night programme. The programme makers are gonna have a lot to edit into it. Must remember to tape it! Anyone know how long and when it's on...

Rosetta: A Sky at Night Special

"This special episode of The Sky at Night puts the viewer right at the heart of the action, witnessing events as they happened from inside mission control. It reveals the latest images, explores the first groundbreaking science coming back from the comet and asks the astonishing questions that make this mission so captivating..."

Should be an interesting episode.

[Altitude]

Could these pictures be related to this event?...

http://beforeitsnews.com/space/2014/11/concerns-over-esas-data-release-policy-amidst-rosetta-comet-landing-2485232.html

[C7tsj]

Is it just me or does anyone else feel a little sad Philae is in hibernation? I appreciate the mission was a massive success but I can't help feel a bit sad. Really enjoyed the whole event, this is like my generations Moon landing (although Rosetta/Philae eclipse that IMO).

Hopefully she wakes up in the coming weeks / months.

Mark

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Yes, it's a shame it wasn't able to anchor itself in sunlight but on the whole it's been quite a successful jump into the unknown.

[Stu]

Agreed, a little sad, but as Knight says, it's been a pretty spectacular success all in all. I would feel more down about it if they hadn't been able to get the data off Philae before it went into hibernation.

Doesn't mean I'm not rooting for it to wake up when it sees a little more sunshine though :-)

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Altitude]

Considering so many unfortunate problems, it managed to complete (if it will not wake up) the mission better than many expected.

It could simply bounce once of the surface during landing and never send any signals back to earth. That would be a heartbreaking. In this case it actually had more "luck" during mission than people think.

[Jonk]

Update for anyone who hasn't seen yet:

On Friday, we published a series of remarkable NAVCAM images acquired by Rosetta as the orbiter monitored the intended landing point of Philae on 12 November from its orbit above Comet 67P/C-G. The images show what appears to be the shadow of a dust cloud kicked up when Philae made its first touch down on the surface of the comet at 15:35 UTC.

The images were provided by ESA's Flight Dynamics team on Friday, who sent them to the web team to be published as soon as possible: we all wanted to make sure you saw them right away. Once we had convinced ourselves that the dark 'splotch' seen in the second of the images was almost certainly the tell-tale signature of Philae's precise first touch-down and bounce, we put them out.

However, some careful work by a number of people in ESA's Flight Dynamics team and by followers of our Rosetta blog has shown that these NAVCAM images show more, namely Philae itself, just after the bounce!

Philae touchdown site seen by Rosetta's navigation camera. The first image in this sequence was taken on 12 November at 15:30 UTC, just before the lander's first touchdown; the second image was taken at 15:35 UTC, right after touchdown. The large red circle indicates the position of the shadow of the dust cloud caused by the landing. The third image in the sequence is the same as the second, with the likely position of Philae and its shadow highlighted.

Credits: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM; pre-processed by Mikel Catania

It appears as a couple of brighter pixels closely accompanied by its shadow in the form of a couple of darker ones just below, both to the right of the diffuse dust cloud shadow.

Credit for the first discovery goes to Gabriele Bellei, from the interplanetary division of Flight Dynamics, who spent hours searching the NAVCAM images for evidence of the landing.

Once the images were published, blog reader John Broughton posted a comment to report that he had spotted the lander in them (thank you, John).

There was also quite some speculation by Rosetta blog readers in the comments section, wondering which features might be attributable to the lander. Martin Esser, Henning, Kasuha and Haring in particular were among the first to make insightful observations on the topic, although many others have since joined in.

Last but not least, a careful independent review of the images was made by Mikel Catania from the earth observation division of Flight Dynamics, with the same conclusion. He also made the annotated animation shown here.

So very well done, Gabriele and Mikel from Flight Dynamics, as well as John, Martin, Henning, Kasuha and everyone else from the blog: thank you from all of us for helping spot Philae!

P.S. Note that in our rush to share these exciting images with you on Friday, we made a couple of small errors in the labels and text; those have been updated now. In particular, the image that was indicated to have been taken at 15:30:32 UTC, just before touchdown, was actually an image taken at 16:30:32 UTC, about an hour after touchdown. This should indeed have been clear from the obviously changed illumination conditions, but the web team were very tired at the time.

Also, Flight Dynamics have clarified that the green spot on Friday's images is actually the computed touchdown point based on data taken during the deployment and descent to the surface, not the originally intended landing point. Nevertheless, it's still very close to the latter, again a testament to the excellent work done by Flight Dynamics.

[Jonk]

Another update hot of off ESA's blog:

OSIRIS spots Philae drifting across the comet

Tweet

These incredible images show the breathtaking journey of Rosetta’s Philae lander as it approached and then rebounded from its first touchdown on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 12 November 2014.

Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

The mosaic comprises a series of images captured by Rosetta’s OSIRIS camera over a 30 minute period spanning the first touchdown. The time of each of image is marked on the corresponding insets and is in GMT. A comparison of the touchdown area shortly before and after first contact with the surface is also provided.

The images were taken with Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera when the spacecraft was 17.5 km from the comet centre, or roughly 15.5 km from the surface. They have a resolution of 28 cm/pixel and the enlarged insets are 17 x 17 m.

From left to right, the images show Philae descending towards and across the comet before touchdown. The image taken after touchdown, at 15:43 GMT, confirms that the lander was moving east, as first suggested by the data returned by the CONSERT experiment, and at a speed of about 0.5 m/s.

The final location of Philae is still not known, but after touching down and bouncing again at 17:25 GMT, it reached there at 17:32 GMT. The imaging team is confident that combining the CONSERT ranging data with OSIRIS and navcam images from the orbiter and images from near the surface and on it from Philae’s ROLIS and CIVA cameras will soon reveal the lander’s whereabouts.

The insets are provided separately below (the timestamps are recorded in the filenames).
All images credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

 

[mercboyan]

Emily Lakdawalla is about to do an AMA on reddit. She was actually there at ESA as this all went down and she's a total wizard when it comes to comets and especially pictures about comets. I'll find a link if anyone wants to ask her about Philae