Paris (AFP)
- The European Space Agency (ESA)on Sunday unveiled images of the probe Philae
after it bounced while making its historic landing on a comet last Wednesday.
The
discovery came thanks to painstaking follow-up analysis of a series of pictures
ESA had released on Friday, the agency said.
The photos
appeared to show only a trail of dust kicked up by Philae when it touched down
and rebounded after a pair of harpoons, designed to anchor it to the comet's
surface, failed to work.
But closer
scrutiny of the images has shown a bright dot that is Philae, as well as a dark
dot made by its shadow as it zooms upwards in the rebound.
"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," ESA's Rosetta mission said in a blog post.
The
discovery came from hours of patient work by flight dynamics specialist
Gabriele Bellei, the posting said
(http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/11/16/philae_spotted_after_first_landing/).
A science
lab laden with 10 instruments, Philae was sent down to Comet
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by its mother ship Rosetta, after a 10-year trek that
covered 6.5 billion kilometres (four billion miles) around the inner Solar
System.
After its
first bounce, it is believed Philae landed and bounced once more before
settling around a kilometre from its target site.
The lander
found itself at an angle and in the shadow of a cliff, which meant its solar
panels were unable to capture the sunlight it needed to recharge its batteries.
But ESA
says Philae successfully carried out its scheduled research programme thanks to
a battery that had enough charge for 60 hours' work.
Philae has
now gone into standby mode for lack of power. Mission managers still have some
hope it will revive as the comet races closer to the Sun, bringing greater
illumination.
Approved in
1993 and launched in 2004, the Rosetta mission aims to uncover the chemical and
physical secrets of comets -- primordial clusters of ice and dust that may
explain the origins of the Solar System and, say some, of life on Earth.
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