Wednesday, November 12, 2014

"Touchdown! My new address: 67P!"

The ESA spacecraft Rosetta released the Philae lander which appears to have successfully landed on comet 67P. Quite an achievement! But there were some problems.

Comet 67P has a very weak gravity, so anchoring harpoons were designed to shoot into the comet to fix the spacecraft to the surface. They failed to fire and Philae is not firmly secure, ESA says.
 
Philae lander manager Stephan Ulamec said the probe may have lifted off again and turned. "So maybe we didn't land once -- we landed twice," he told a news conference.

The complete up-to-date story can be found on the CNN web site.

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