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The mission ended 4 years ago.
In November 2014, everyone in the control center of the European Space Agency waited with bated breath. After ten years of travel, the Philae robotic module was finally supposed to land on comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
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After the Rosetta probe launched it, the car was supposed to land on the surface, but it didn’t work.
Instead, Philae bounced off the comet several times until it finally landed in a dark cavity, where mission staff didn’t find it until two years later.
Scientists have now been able to reconstruct Philae’s voyage of November 12, 2014 in detail. Their quasi-investigative work has shown that the incident helped reveal more secrets of comet Churyum-Gerasimenko, which once approaches the Sun every six years.
Research on the mission, which officially ended four years ago, was published Wednesday in the prestigious scientific journal Nature.
The harpoons did not extend
“Philae left us one last mystery to solve,” writes Laurence O’Rourke, also involved in the research of the module, in an ESA press release.
Philae was originally supposed to land on the comet, examine its solid surface, do some experiments, and send all data to Earth. However, her moored harpoons did not extend and Philae only touched the original landing site. It left a crater behind and bounced further.
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