The European Space Agency gets some good news with regards to their missing comet lander that went missing after only being active for three days. No, it wasn’t aliens (or a Transformer), but instead the Philae lander was found wedged into a dark crack on the comet surface. That explains the sudden drop in communication as Philae wasn’t/isn’t able to get sunlight to power itself.
Rosetta Mission Manager Patrick Martin said, “This remarkable discovery comes at the end of a long, painstaking search.”
He continued by saying, “We were beginning to think that Philae would remain lost forever. It is incredible we have captured this at the final hour.”
Holger Sierk, principal investigator of the OSIRIS camera added, “Now that the lander search is finished we feel ready for Rosetta’s landing, and look forward to capturing even closer images of Rosetta’s touchdown site.”
While Philae will never come back to life, it is nice that the agency found its little baby and knows exactly where it ended up. In less than a month the Rosetta probe will impact with the comet ending its 12 years survey mission. As it crashed the probe will take a number of measurements and images of the comet that have never been before been captured before.
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