They mentioned on the press conference a couple of hours ago that they would re-take the panorama with longer exposure times, as soon as today I think.

A 360x180 from the ESA released polar view. I've removed the shadows a bit since they only confuse things.
Click to view attachment

Fantastic site. Can't wait for the full res images.

From this lander orientation image it appears to me the lander is resting with it's base against a cliff.

(it would be a little easier to visualise if they corrected the sun's angle on the drawing-part)

It is hard to interpret the CIVA pan and draw conclusions about the orientation of the lander without any obvious bits of horizon to refer to.
To me, the dark blurry image at the upper right could be terrain too close to bring into focus.
And yet the clean dark of the upper left panel could well be empty sky.
But then how to get from one to the other without some horizon in between?

Does anyone know the angular width of each individual panel?
They are assembled to give the impression of almost 360 degree coverage, but if each panel is quite narrow, that leaves a lot to the imagination.

isn't the most likely scenario that its lateral motion was stopped by a cliff, so the direction it was coming from-- where the original landingplace was-- should be comparatively clear, and the opposite side much steeper?

The image at 2 o'clock position was described as empty sky. All others are from the surface.
They don't know if sky means up or just the only direction that's not covered by rocks.

The image with the model in the middle makes it pretty obvious. In a 'nominal' situation - we would simply have the near-field of the landing site in a spherical panorama in that image.

However - we can see sky in the 2 O'clock position, and then from 3 O'Clock round to about 11 O'Clock - we see ground. Thus we can estimate the 'down' for the spacecraft is near the 7 O'clock position in that image.

My modified version of the CIVA polar pan. (original copyright ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA, my modifications not copyrighted)

Phil

Click to view attachment

From a video I saw the force that drives the screws in is from the pads hitting the ground, if that is correct, then sliding down a cliff face won't make the ice screws work, will it ?
Of course I just remembered the first big bounce it did, of which right now no one can say for sure why that happened.

but if it was stopped by a cliff, and ended up at an angle, the likeliest angle would be with one or two legs against the cliff's uphill grade, and the other(s) lower... so mightn't the cliff be invisible at 2 o'clock, with the cam aimed too high to see it, and the original landingpoint towards 7 o'clock, where the cam is pointed down too low to see the horizon?

And a panorama view of the same. Something doesn't look right to me. Maybe the 'sky' is not sky but deep shadow without any rocks lit by reflection.

Phil

Click to view attachment

The panoramic view has 5 pictures, two upper, left and right are pointing to sky, the rest three are of land. The upper left picture shows that the feet is standing on an inclined surface, the three lower pictures show very dark surface, no snow, but it is rocky surface. The upper right picture, there is a spray of gas or it is an optical distortion effect.

Wait for a better illumination or take a longer exposure in order to help in localizing the final landing place. Sure that the Rosetta's OSIRIS camera would be able to pinpoint the Philae's landing.

This is all very exciting. With Curiosity it was all about the EDL, heart in mouth stuff with real drama at each stage. Once landed, everything was pretty much nominal. With Philae the actual landing was a little confusing and uncertain, or at least the presentation of it was, but now we have epic drama. Which way round are we? Will a 'flip' be attempted? Can we recharge?

Given the odds of getting to this stage, this is nowhere near as bad as it could have been, and the environment is truly remarkable.

At this morning's conference, one of the scientists mentioned stars in that image. At video resolution, I could not see any and assumed he was talking about the circular flare (which looks to me like illuminated dust on the lens cover). If you have any better resolution image at hand, can you see any evidence of stars in it? Seeing any would certainly help settle which way this view is looking.

(edited for readability)

Various landing simulations at the Max-Planck institute in 2004!

Philae Lander Simulations

comparing these two pix to the lo-res pic with the blue diamond (in the following post), i think your second pic's view is too narrow to include any of the blue diamond, but your first captures it vividly as a steep cliff in the 2 o'clock direction

I remember during the press conference yesterday after the landing, they told that the communication between Philae and Rosetta was interrupted sooner than predicted. Now we know why... Philea was not in the right position/location.

A very very crude stab at some sort of Philae orientation against a cliff that would roughly match the images we're seeing. (anim gif)

The rock face looks like it is free of debris. It's as if it has been 'cleaned' by some process. Perhaps jetting activity will eventually 'reorient' the lander.

With an irregularly-shaped body with minimal gravity (what's a gram-force here or there for a 100kg object?), maybe vertical is a bit of an academic question. For example, if it happened to have its base aligned with the side of the "cliff," may as well call that vertical and start drilling?

does this try to position the sun as in the panorama?
do you see philae's shadow as being somewhere between 4 o'clock and 7 o'clock?
is your hollow meant to account for the 10 o'clock mystery-pic in the panorama?

It looks like the "left" leg (around 11 o'clock in Phil's polar) is hooked on that rock (whose shadow is lit by the reflected sun off the lander's body?). I'm trying to think how the lander doesn't rotate naturally to rest on two gear. So the orientation is like Doug shows and the leg is in fact hooked and in tension(?), or it's resting and the lander is rotated more to the left.

I think you have it backwards. The top should facing the other way.

if the flywheel was stopped, was that a mistake, prematurely assuming there'd be no bounce???

If Philae 'thought' it was landed, wouldn't it have taken its planned imaging sequence? If any were taken during the bounce, they haven't been released...

The overall rotation of Philae should have provided stability of the z-axis.

Took the CIVA frames and built a CIVA panorama as a QTVR. It makes more sense looking at it like that...

Click to view attachment

...and a 360 pano for completeness...

MOD REMINDER: Please review the rules--esp. rule 2.6 for this topic at this time--before posting.

Thanks all for the highlights of the press briefing. What an astonishing time this is!

We pretty clearly see one antenna in contact with the surface. Given how it's unclear that the 11 o'clock leg, in particular, is in contact with the surface, I have to wonder if maybe we're forming a tripod with two legs and the antenna. Generically, it's hard to place four legs (quadrupod) all on an irregular surface, but with three it's much easier.

Of course on Earth the antenna would likely not support the lander's weight, but here it's so light...

However, my statement about quadrupods may not apply completely here, since it will be easier to place four legs when the legs are flexible.

my only experience with sublimation (of ice in winter) doesn't leave any traces, so what else might it be doing?

others here have described the geology as "freeze/thaw fracturing" and "gravelly/crumbly".

it looks brittle to me, ie lightweight?

do we know the minerology?

we expected ice because of all the outgassing, but for unknown reasons none is visible on the surface... right?

Good blog post from Emily Lakdawalla

I'd be very surprized to see stars in an image that should be more or less exposed for daylight, even with a very dark comet surface. Maybe more likely would be "snow" particles from the comet.

Indeed, in the lander parting shots we can clearly see what must be such "snow" particles. Here's a tweaked version of the wide-angle shot:
Click to view attachment
The numerous slanting streaks may look like star trails, but they all have different lengths which means they can't be stars.

No doubt there's interesting stuff to be learned from a pic like this - off the top of my head, plot the distribution of streak lengths. Also see if there's a measurable spread in directions.

I think this is an incredibly cool shot: orbiter plowing through a "snowstorm" as the lander receeds into the distance!

(Edit: of course the distances of the particles from the orbiter is unclear, as we've discussed in the past here.)

MUPUS will be deployed around midnight according to their team's twitter feed: https://twitter.com/Philae_MUPUS/status/532968586005217280

That's very nice, thanks. It looks to me as if the Sun is "above" the lander, which is sort of hanging on a fairly steeply sloped surface, does that sound sensible? So they'd be getting 1.5 hours of Sun where the rays are almost parallel to the solar panels, therefore probably very little in the way of wattage. Ugh.

Does anybody have technical info on the legs' ability to hop? I have seen a technical article about the (failed?) harpoons, and have heard the legs have a limited ability to be actuated, but nothing in technical documentation.

Each camera has roughly a 60 deg fov, I believe with some overlap. But that applies to imaging to infinity, eg a distant horizon. If there's a boulder or rock face very close to the cameras, the overlap would be less. However, the two frames near 3 and 4 o'clock clearly show overlap, so maybe this won't be a problem. That overlap should allow the team to extract some depth information.

There is a stereo pair (9 o'clock position) for good depth information.

The lander was designed to rotate which would give more stereo coverage. But with one antenna contacting the surface (and perhaps even supporting some weight) that strikes me as a risky move...

[MUPUS will be deployed around midnight according to their team's twitter feed /quote]

From what I have read here and elsewhere it would seem that deployment of MUPUS might push the lander out from the shadow of the overhanging rock, using the rock itself to push against.

It could be ingenious.

just in, from Ciel et Espace tweet (David Fosse)

Aïe, apparemment les commandes envoyées à #Philae pour MUPUS n'ont pas fonctionné.

(It appears Mupus commands sent to the lander did not work)

https://twitter.com/Philae_MUPUS/status/533004149005512704

Link broke; they're going to try a reupload.

Where would Rosetta be in relation to the DSN right now?

Have just looked at the DSN Now website and there are no comms with Rosetta at this time.

But won't MUPUS come down on the flat side of the lander, ie 9 o'clock in the panorama?

In the first place it's hard to tell from the images we've seen whether there are rock faces on more than one side of us. My guess is any attempt to move the lander would be last ditch, before the battery dies.

But if they drive it in, as they seem to expect for the sake of science (reading from @Philae_MUPUS), and it does not/cannot extract afterward, then Philae will indeed be anchored. The strategy is not yet apparent to me.

https://twitter.com/Philae_MUPUS/status/533007639631101953

they will deploy MUPUS to take measurements, not to change Philae position

ESA has a bunch of it's own deep space antennas too:
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operatio...acking_stations

Maybe they are initiating a program to get as much done as possible before the batteries die. If MUPUS works, they may go straight to drill?

[ESA has a bunch of it's own deep space antennas too:]
[/quote]


Of course

MUPUS upload complete: https://twitter.com/Philae_MUPUS/status/533021560593219584

I don't know what type of material MUPUS was designed to drive into but if that overhanging rock is harder than that then the manouver will move the lander somewhat.

If it is less than or equal to it then the manouver may also act as an anchor for further science or attempts at a reposition.

Or it's le's get as much done as possible before the batteries run out.

At the end of the day it's great just seeing this all happen

Akuo,

Just had a look at the ESTRACK website.

I'd say they have it pretty much covered!!

You make the assumption that every picture taken during that period has made it to the ground. We know for a fact the relay between Philae and Rosetta was unreliable - especially at that time - so it's quite likely the downlink of those products was incomplete.

I don't know if Philae had the capacity to store those images so they could then be recovered using a retransmit command from Rosetta during a later track.