Has the thruster actually been disabled though? I think there was a tiny chance it might have been a pressure sensor fault?

According to Emily, they'll still try the thruster. Some believe it is the pressure sensor that failed.

They tried two pins, twice each.

Both harpoons will be fired on touchdown.

Audio was just cut. Comments from the flight controller lead me to believe they lost all signals. Hopefully I'm dead wrong.

Betwee the lines, I hear, that it's both harpoons, which will be fired.

According to the DSN page, Rosetta is not transmitting right now.

Loss of signal before the landing has been planned, as far as I remember.

eeeeek

That could be a good thing, at least for the lander. If the orbiter has lost tracking or reset then there is hope for both spacecraft.

I've lost the webcast too. Just to make things more interesting.

Web is back and folks are looking a lot happier.

Edit: DSN problem?

Edit: Clearly they have telemetry back.

sounds like td

LANDING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!

YAY!!!!

wow, the story behind all that is going to be good.

ESA blog went down for me and spaceflightnow . It's definitely landed ?

Confirmed on the surface and has telemetry, harpoons rewound. legs compressed!

Yes, if lots of websites crash that probably means success ;-)

yes, firmly anchored with the harpoons!

"You all heard, that Philae has landed".
sounds official

Now I believe it, from the BBC :

"Shortly after the touchdown was confirmed, Stephan Ulamec, the mission's lander chief, said: "Philae is talking to us... we are on the comet."

Currently lots of politicians yacking, mostly to each other. Hopefully we will get back to the folks doing the work soon.

Edit: According to the schedule the first panorama is being taken and transmitted.

VikingMars,
do I hear Mr Le Gall making his speech from Cite des Sciences? Pls. yr summary in English!

Congratulations to ESA from a proud European!

https://mobile.twitter.com/philae2014

"Touchdown! - My new address: 67P"

Deep Space Network from Madrid is currently receiving signals from Rosetta

I'm impressed by how many people has felt enganged with this mission. 500,000 just on the live stream. It's a huge success for ESA.

Apparently from the stream, they're experiencing difficulties deploying the anchors.

From the ESA livestream: Anchors didn't fire, thruster didn't fire. They're not sure they're stable on the surface...

scratch "firmly anchored with harpoons"! Latest is that the harpoons apparently did not fire, but science sequence ongoing.

There are also screws, did they deploy?

They're going to think about a second try to shoot the harpoons.

Oh no.......

Yesterday, after the problems with the cold gas thruster became apparent, Fred Jansen mentioned that "if the surface is what we think it is the ice-screws alone will do the job". He may well be proven right in the coming hours!

Sounds like its time to get some science done just in case Philae starts floating away?

If the harpoons and thruster didnt fire - it makes Philae's survival even more extraordinary!!

Sounded as if Philae took an image 15s after landing, to be processed.
The message came seconds before the cut, so I'm not quite sure, whether I understood it correctly.

Science should have been started in an automated way seconds after landing.

The guy talked about "anchors": did he mean "harpoons" or "foot screws"??
How could harpoons be ever shot NOW? They have a 324 km/h exit speed!

Where did you hear this - was it the ESA livestream?

22:08:00 of live streaming here:
http://rosetta.esa.int/

But he talks of ANCHORS; not HARPOONS.

I've been listening to two lifestreams in two different languages at the same time, but I think it has been the Rosetta #CometLanding webcast about a minute before the end of the transmission.

Its confirmed now, harpoons did not fire.

each new tweet makes me more nervous again LOL

The ice screws may hold it for now, but maybe not whne the comet gets more active.

Twitter: "I'm on the surface but my harpoons did not fire. My team is hard at work now trying to determine why."

for the drilling operation (thankfully not part of the automated first cycle) the lander also needs to be secured. Same for the MUPUS hammering sensor I guess.

I can't believe the harpoons did not fire

Emily's blog at the Planetary Society has crashed, or something. Two posts from earlier this week are missing, and there's nothing from today (apart from her twitter feed). Probably another instance of great excitement -> overload.

TTT

This tweet should be clearer:
Click to view attachment

Via BBC (sorry, I can't find a more direct reference):

Are there fail-safes designed into the harpoon firing such as amount of tilt or an interlock with the cold gas thrusters? One would think that in an extremely low gravity situation, that amount of force being applied downward without something else to balance it out (such as the thrusters) could actually launch the lander back up. Let's say the lander was perched on a rock and badly tilted. Is firing a harpoon a good idea at a 45 degree angle to the main surface? I'd think the odds of two failures of systems at once (the thrusters and the harpoon firing) would be very low unless they shared some common circuit.

Data from Rosetta is still coming down.

the data stream should end about 19hUT acc.:
http://download.esa.int/esoc/shares/1/esa_...web08112014.pdf

pics should be presented soon around 18h30UT !

amazing mission !

Robert