The first bounce took 53 minutes from first landing to second landing. The second bounce from lift-off to landing again, took 7 minutes.

Thank you for the prompt reports from Cité de l´espace Rakhir! Great excitement! It was not possible to see the video conference from germany..

Usually I'm just lurking but as this conference was just in French...
Yes, great excitement ! Amazing mission !

Probably up against a cliff, rather than inside a cave, and the shadow of the cliff is a problem. Won't the 1.5 hours of sunlight allow some battery recharging ?

Link to a 2-frame Civa mosaic, full pano scheduled to be released in bit more than an hour.

I imagine that there will be thermal issues even if they can somehow stay alive with such little power.

But as they get closer to the Sun it's going to warm up right ?

Yes and that's what was suppose to eventually kill the lander because it would get too hot.

On the science front the ground looks like it's subject to a lot of freeze/thaw fracturing.

... and some teeth-like pebbles near the lower center look a little like crystals.

===

In the cave the lander may be protected from overheating; may be it can be made to wake up again with some delay closer to the Sun, if an intentional jump is discarded.

Yeah, most of the comets geology seems to be the results of sublimation..

What a robust little machine!!!! Incredible to me they are still getting signal! amazing

It's a very dramatic scenario playing out.
Some big, big decisions to be made without knowing the full picture.

CNES presser: "We have lots of data" ... "I won't reveal what the scientists have discovered, but it is extraordinary!" *big grin*

Also made a quicktime VR of the first "bounce site".

Touchdown #1



for ordinary picture:
http://mattias.malmer.nu/2014/11/philae-fi...hdown-location/

edit:
apparently my site was not accessable for some of you so:
Click to view attachment

Thank you Mattias, fantastic rendering picture!

Thanks a lot Mattias : how NICE !!!

"They’re going to try to “modify the orientation” to get more light on the solar panels."

They just showed some CIVA images as well as the lander superimposed on a panorama created with them.

The first image is the screenshots of the CIVA images. The first two images are the same thing, but one's exposed longer or brightened.

They are going to move Rosetta to a better orbit for Philae communications, one burn has already been made.

How nice that you are providing us with info, because from France, the ESA server is down ! Thanks a lot Hungry4info

Pretty scary cliff above the Philae.

Philae tracking images with Rosetta.
One shows a long-distance shot of the lander next to the comet.
The other is the highest-resolution image of the lander they acquired.

Edit: The images are on their site now.
http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Missions/...8class%29/image

Landing site before 1st bounce...2nd and 3rd unknown for now.
http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/...t_touchdown.png
http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/..._close-up_1.png

Blue zone is real landing area.
Red is predicted primary landing site.

The orientation was described as "vertical", with two of the feet on the surface and the other slightly off.

So sounds like right next to some cliff or overhang.

You can see the shadow of one of the antennas in one of the CIVA images. This provides a lot of perspective on how close some of these features are.
(I suppose everyone probably knows this, I just didn't realise it until rotating the image to try to make sense of it).

I may have missed this before, but my understanding from a comment at the press conference is that the harpoons were commanded to fire, but didn't.

Details of the harpoons can be seen here http://www.esmats.eu/esmatspapers/pastpape.../2003/thiel.pdf

Well, just a thought...
I think they should do whatever they can with battery and finally try to drill into the comet in hope that they can move to some better orientation. There might be a possibility for that because Philae is NOT anchored and comet's gravity is so weak.

No. The circumference of a roughly spherical object, of roughly 4km across is very roughly 12 km.

1 km is 1/12th of that..not 1/4

I think the bottom line of the press conference is that they are in a good position all in all, and once they get confidence about the exact position and configuration they are in, there are a number of possibilities for "optimizing" the situation. Who knows, they even talked about the possibility of a "jump"--risky but we've seen that kind of ingenuity before, as long as they have something to play with and communications were described as excellent. Any mechanical system onboard will produce reaction. They even said that the use of the drill without the lander being anchored *could* cause the lander to flip. Also the harpoons didn't fire for unknown reason at this point, but they haven't written them off. As for the meager 1.5 hours of sunlight per day, even if the batteries run down there is a safe mode that the lander *could* wake up from even months down the road. So champagne is called for.

After attitude and context are known in more detail, they might consider to use the landing gear to get more sun.
But they'll be cautious before, to get as many science data back as possible, since mechanical operations are of high risk.

That is the impression I am getting here also. Jean-Pierre Bibring said something like "Do not put any emphasis on failure of the system ... it is gorgeous where we are!" And I do not think Philae is upside down as has been suggested, I have the impression it is leaning but wedged in place.

Ha ha, no need for harpoons, just wedge yourself into a crevice.

I still struggle to interprete this.
"Vertical" is ... what?
The z-axes? Or the x/y-plane? ...

Thorsten

(removed by me, better panorama already exists)

Yes that would have been wonderful, but not in this weak gravity. =)
Yet when it is as much in shadow as it is, do suggest something such though.

And a confirmation: They will be looking into possible means of adjusting the position of the lander.

@Thorsten: I wondered too at first, now I guess it is in relation to the nearby surface and not anything else.

About drilling:
A very important aspect of the drill (the SD2 instrument package) is its sample collection function for the Organics-chasing instruments COSAC and PTOLEMY.

So I believe there will be action with SD2 one way or the other to deliver samples, otherwise these two most important instruments (“did comets bring life-precursors to Earth?) will be idle. The potential major science return justifies the effort, now that Philea is fully intact on the surface: Emily: "no damage to Philea"

Correction: Matt Taylor just mentioned that these two instruments already sniffed samples, so they are certainly not idle

The camera arrangement is in principle similar to that of the Google mapping camera pods. If these images could be rendered in the Google Map environment, you'd essentially have that ability to peer around with spatial context.

This is just a guess...:

The final Philae landing is very dark site for pictures, I am afraid that neither CIVA or ROLIS are able to take clear pictures around the Philae's landing. I agree that the most important priority is to use the electrical energy for the science purpose before to attempt a risk try to move another place where there is more light in order to charge battery for further science.

If not success, otherwise, it is at all a great mission. Applause!

It is the first lesson which will help to improve for future asteroid/comet hunt mission by improving the ability in anchoring or staying properly on any kind of surface.

two small points:

during the 2hr bounce, philae surely would have been tumbling, fast or slow, so however bad the current position turns out to be, it could have been far worse.

and a question: might the sun glint visibly (to rosetta) off philae's shiny surfaces, against the black surface?

Any panorama stitching software can handle the images, provided that there are enough common reference points. I see overlap on two images, and those where released stitched.
For the rest it can be done by having the lens + sensor + orientation parameters.
And yes, you can use any panorama with the Streetview API, if you are into programming...

It wouldn't have tumbled, thanks to the flywheel. Thank goodness!

If that's the general area, my guess would be one of those narrow depressions.
Also think that the surface features are smaller and closer.

They already have. This is the '360' from the lander. Obviously - lying on its side - half of it is pointing into space. There is PLENTY of detail to be seen in the sunlit parts of the surface - and given a different time of 'day' - I'm sure other areas will be visible

http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/20...comet_panoramic

It was my understanding that the flywheel stopped operation upon landing (the first time) as Philae went into "landed" mode, no?

Maybe it means feet tilted toward a vertical plane, away from the horizontal. Maybe could be visualized like this:
Click to view attachment

The released panorama is a polar projection - or some similar geometry. I'm not at my usual place and can't post a brightened version now, but brighten it and you can see the three footpads (one almost lost in shadow) in plan view. It's sloping, so one side looks up at the 'cliff', and part of the sky, the other side looks down at the ground close in (mostly in shadow, but later views will presumably show it all in sunlight).

Phil