Rosetta’s Philae Lander Snaps a Selfie
Rosetta's solar panels as seen by Philae's CIVA imaging system on April 14, 2014. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA
Philae is awake… and taking pictures! This image, acquired last night with the lander’s CIVA (Comet nucleus Infrared and Visible Analyzer) instrument, shows the left and right solar panels of ESA’s well-traveled Rosetta spacecraft, upon which the 100-kilogram Philae is mounted.
Philae successfully emerged from hibernation on March 28 via a wake-up call from ESA.
After over a decade of traveling across the inner Solar System, Rosetta and Philae are now in the home stretch of their ultimate mission: to orbit and achieve a soft landing on comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It will be the first time either feat has ever been attempted by a spacecraft. Read more here.
Source: ESA Rosetta Blog
Recent Posts
Titan Dragonfly is Go!…. for Phase C
The surface exploration of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, just got one step closer to reality…
Telescopes Didn’t Always Play Nicely with Each Other. That’s About to Change
Those readers who have dabbled with astronomical imaging will be familiar with the technique of…
A Tiny Quadcopter Could Gather Rocks for China’s Sample Return Mission
Space exploration is always changing. Before February 2021 there had never been a human made…
JWST Reveals a Newly-Forming Double Protostar
As our newest, most perceptive eye on the ongoing unfolding of the cosmos, the James…
Why Don't We See Robotic Civilizations Rapidly Expanding Across the Universe?
In 1950, while sitting down to lunch with colleagues at the Los Alamos Laboratory, famed…
The Second Most Energetic Cosmic Ray Ever Found
"Oh My God," someone must have said in 1991 when researchers detected the most energetic…