I disagree. I see three feet all oriented toward the 'cliff' in the CIVA images. Moreover - if the feet were pointed away from the cliff and the top of the spacecraft (and it's S-Band patch antennae) were facing the cliff - then we would have appalling downwind from Philae to Rosetta...however the control team report they have a good connect to the spacecraft.

Finally - the MUPUS deployment is being talked about as something that may contact a surface. It goes 'down' relative to Philae....i.e. towards a cliff face 'below' the bottom of Philae.

MUPUS is deploying right now. hashtag on Twitter is #ThePinprick.

to Algorithm: According to the MUPUS twitter feed, they believe the probe can hammer into almost any expected material hardness. And, at least when programmed as they have done right now, with only a v slight chance of moving Philae.

I too wonder about its anchoring capabilities.

This whole thing is an amazing drama. Clearly there are some tough choices and risks to be weighed. I hope they can get a bunch of science done in the next couple of days, carefully assess the situation, & then successfully 'pop' off the cliff to a better, sunnier orientation.

Top risks that I can imagine (from my comfortable chair) include flipping all the way over instead or perhaps even destabilizing material above Philae that could crumble 'down' onto lander (not sure how that would work in the tiny gravity)?

https://twitter.com/Philae_MUPUS/status/533020163432792064
https://twitter.com/Philae_MUPUS/status/532993419279618048
https://twitter.com/Philae_MUPUS/status/533021120140935168

https://twitter.com/Philae_MUPUS/status/533018051214843904
https://twitter.com/Philae_MUPUS/status/533011969264328704

Stevelu,

'Flipping all the way over'


Best estimates as to what is 'behind/under' the main body of the lander?

Have looked at a few images but struggling to get a good grip on that part.

I have heard the word 'wedged' used before now which, to me, implies held up in more than one location.

Given their current situation, with battery charge clearly due to run out, I vote they grab all the science data they can as is, then execute any physical actions they have the power left for that *might* possibly bump it away from that shadow. By late Friday the only alternative will be a dead lander so they have little to lose.

From 'The Guardian' newspaper here in the UK to be published tomorrow, (Friday 14 Nov)

'But the team has decided to operate another moving instrument, named Mupus, on Thursday evening. This could cause Philae to shift, but calculations show that it would be in a direction that could improve the amount of sunlight falling on the probe. A change in angle of only a few degrees could help. A new panoramic image will be taken after the Mupus deployment to see if there has been any movement.

Meanwhile, the Rosetta orbiter team will continue to try to pinpoint Philae’s position. This will be done with images from the mother ship’s Osiris wide-angle camera and its Concert radar instrument. The Concert instrument communicates with Philae and is designed to beam radar through the interior of the comet to reveal the internal structure. When Rosetta is directly overhead, Concert can also help to pinpoint the lander’s position. “When we see where we are, we can decide what to do next,” said Bibring.'

"But time is tight, the first 24 hours of the battery life will soon be gone. It is expected to be completely drained sometime on Saturday. “We are running against the clock,” admits Bibring, “Don’t put the emphasis on failure, it is gorgeous where we are.”

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/no...ons-esa-rosetta

From memory is there not a 'safe mode' that the lander can adopt and then 'warm itself up' when energy conditions are more favourable, ie. when nearer the the sun/different illumination angle?

Yes, I've seen comments about the possibility Philae could wake out of a 'sleep' later in the mission, when sun angles (perhaps) and intensity (surely) will improve. So, if they assess a risk of getting into a significantly worse position, they will also have to weigh that into their calculations and decision-making.

Much admiration for the pioneering explorers who must grapple with all of this, and on such a tight timeline! I wish I could send them care packages.

If those packages contain things ending in 'ine', i am sure they will be welcome.

Had a long conversation with the Rosetta project scientist this evening and at the end of it he blessed my interpretation of the lander pan, and said that many members of the team believe Philae is in a hole but things will be clearer once they have better-exposed, stereo images.

How will the sunlight change on the lander (in its present estimated position) change over the changing season (for lack of a better term) over the next month or so?

Thanks Emily, that helps a lot.
Did your conversation also touch on whether, if the batteries die by Saturday, the lander can wake up again if it receives more sun in the future?
It would be nice to get an authoritative take on that issue.

Extremely hard to say now because we don't know (publicly at least) exactly where the lander is, don't know it's orientation, and don't know how boulders or cliffs might block the sun.

Any info on when these better images will be acquired?

I hope they are soon

SD2 tweets that drilling is on the agenda:

https://twitter.com/RosettaSD2

Way to roll the dice and try to get everything we can, guys!

If you look at the mid right image in Emilys' last post, and then go here,

http://sci.esa.int/rosetta/31445-instruments/

I believe the nearest leg in the illustration from the web page is the leg seen in the mid right image from Emilys' post.

Philae lander manager Stephan Ulamec:

"He who dares wins, Rodney, he who dares wins"

We definitely know the orientation of the lander in the panorama - check out this press release image.

But we don't know (yet) which way's "north" (or even "up" for that matter), so we don't know where the sun will rise and set.

Never thought I'd see an OFAH reference on UMSF. Well played, sir!

I was looking at the "best" of the CIVA images in terms of showing detail of the surface near Philae. I noticed a couple of very interesting features...

Click to view attachment

In this image there is what appears to be thin, straight rod, or pipe. Looks for all the world like a length of copper pipe. Not necessarily unremarkable, but it appears to sit directly in front of what looks an awful lot like a black-smoker-like structure. The smoker-like formation looks like the side closest to the camera has broken off, and the pipe-like piece could have been inside of the smoker-like formation.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see black-smoker-like structures on a comet -- at times there are likely pockets of volatiles that are seeping slowly out of the innards of the comet's body, finding paths to the vacuum outside and altering the material they pass through, also pulling material along with the gases and possibly liquids coming out of them. So, you could build internal pipe-like structures and external black-smoker-like structures.

It's just really kewl to see something like this.

Also, something else I noticed...

Click to view attachment

In this second inset, you can see what are probably slick masses of ice, flattened onto the underlying surface. Almost looking like gobs of plastic or silly putty. They're obviously shiny in a glassy sort of way that makes you think about soft plastics, or ice. Some of the little knobbly features also look like they are partially covered with this "goey ice" look, too.

Just a couple of initial observations...

-the other Doug (With my shield, not yet upon it)

And you can bet that the ESA scientists are poring over those and possibly other things that catch their trained eyes. These are details that might not have been visible from the other, "flat as hell" safe site. Philae is a good demonstration of not only "any landing you can walk away from is a good one," but also of serendipity in exploration.

At this point, nearly all of the contact science tools have been deployed and are returning data. Come to think of it, Philae joins other probes that have done their jobs in a limited lifespan: Huygens on Titan, Galileo's probe, LCROSS at the Moon's south pole, and surely others. Failures because their batteries died or they went out in a flash? That I can answer only by reciting a requiem that deeply moves me: the lesson of the moth by Don Marquis (http://www.donmarquis.org/themoth.htm).

Venera.

Going to be quite the harsh thermal environment when it naps here, too.

All the Veneras come to mind too (Edit: beaten!), but Philae has outlasted them all by far! No matter what happens, this will have been a learning experience.

The closest other comparison I can come up with is NEAR in 2001; ending up somewhere it has no right being, but still getting the science done in the remaining time.
The other good news I think no one has mentioned is that as perihelion approaches, the insolation for those precious hours where there is sunlight on the panels will go up. Whether that will happened in time to matter, obviously no one knows. Finding Philae in a OSIRIS image can't come soon enough: so many questions would be solved...

I suspect those are compression artifacts.

John

They looked to me like image compression artifacts, too. But then there are large areas of the image that have no visible artifacts at all. Weird compression algorithm, or weird surface...

Is this perhaps also a focusing issue? Possible that some of the blurrier parts may be projecting considerably farther out from the outcrop then the parts that are better resolved.

Who knows, maybe this hole will act as a sun oven and keep Philae warm and cozy.


I was thinking myself if any part of Philae could have left some prints around before coming to a rest. Maybe the beams from one of the legs.

To my eye, it looks like wavelet rather than DCT is used. Either way, the compression seems pretty high.

Those artifacts could be driven by overexposed bits being smeared by the frequency domain cutoff.

@chrislintott tweets:

Batteries are running out - by tonight optimistic but not sure and they don't expect to get anything tomorrow. Close to end of mission.

If they do get contact tonight they might try rotating (with feet on ground) to face the Sun...other crazy ideas probably ruled out by power

Have not given up hope of hearing from @Philae2014 much later as comet changes and heats up. Still a major success already

The images seem to fit with a little overlap, but I've left them separate since the matching of features is tentative.
Also blurred the images to reduce noise, makes real details come out.

Click to view attachment

some real basic questions:

wasn't it expected that the surface of 67p would be mostly water-ice, because many more free-travelling water molecules would collide and stick than the reverse?

instead, the surface seems ice-free... but water keeps outgassing from the interior.

so is 67p a giant ice cube with a thin skin of space-silt?

shouldn't we at least have detected 'frost' around the vents where the gas molecules re-froze to the surface?

is the surface 'teflon'???

"instead, the surface seems ice-free.."

I'd be very very careful in interpreting any images. Remember, these are raw images as the camera sees them. Not necessarily as you would see the surface. You need processing for that, I'm sure that will be done in the future.

A quick web search brings you earth ice images that could look just like rock if you photographed them in black and white and on a high contrast environment such as space.
For example: http://www.dolphincharters.com/journeys/20...tuartKoretz.jpg

Remove the clouds and water, convert to monochrome and it could pass as "space rock".

Also our earth concepts of ice, snow, dust, gravel may not exactly apply here.
That's why landing and ground truth are important.

During the telecon the moderator alluded to a google plus hangout today at "1400." I gather this is the link:

Tweet by Philae Lander:

No, they already knew it was a dark dust covered comet before they arrived. It is in fact blacker than coal. They have also said small grains have been observed by ORSIS floating away from the comet surface and re-landing. Also it's shedding more and more water as it closes in on the Sun.

There is recent SPICE data for Philae, latest is 13-Nov-2014 21:15 but it currently has only the nominal approach, not the bounces. It does give a sense of how the comet was rotating under Philae as it approached:

Click to view attachment

The dots are at 1000-second intervals and show the location of the nearest surface point based on a triaxial ellipsoid model.

For 11/14 Google Hangout this is the link I am using... I see a countdown clock running. Looks like it starts 8:00am EST

http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/11/14/ro...4-nov-1300-gmt/

Starting now...

The audio of the hangout is not too good, lots of echo's .

They will use the drill and ovens, but might not have enough battery left to transmit the results.

How did Matt insult a bunch of people ?

ADMIN: We don't need to discuss that here. Thanks.

The solar panel lady says they might indeed try to hop out of the "corner" they are in.

Check twitter. ADMIN: We can close the discussion on that point.

They might be able to tilt the panels so the bigger one gets more sunlight.

Edit: they mentioned that closer to perihelion might make things easier.

Have they actually identified the location of the lander?
Last thing I read is that they were going to try some triangulation.

Also are they decided that the lander is up against a cliff?
Some believe it's in a hole, so moving the lander a little may not accomplish much.

They have not yet located the lander on pictures.
My impression is the legs can launch the lander quite high above the surface.

Oh yes I thought myself the shirt was completely inappropriate for the occasion. But then again he has his own tastes and personality.

arrghh couldn't watch the hangout. How serious are they about trying the hopping? Is it just a theory? Or perhaps a consideration if Philae survives another day?

The impression I got was that they'll pretty much use the rest of their power analysing the drill sample (if there is any) and APXS data and transmit the results. Hopping is something they would like to do, but I get the impression that will have to happen at a future date with better charged batteries.

Very unlikely.
And here's reason why;
http://youtu.be/7Xm6y0LzlLo?t=41m28s
She also said maybe in august next year will be a chance to wake him up(?)

They seemed to be excited about turning on the flywheel to re-orient Philae so that the landing gear face the surface. It might be worth a try.

It's ironic that they had triple redundancy, but the thrusters then the harpoons failed. I don't know if the leg screws even deployed.