First photos from comet lander Philae – gallery

The image shows comet 67P/CG acquired by the ROLIS instrument on the Philae lander during descent on 12 November. It is around 3km from the surface. Credit: European Space Agency.

One of its legs appears to be suspended in space while the other two have made contact with the ground.

Scientists are frantically trying to establish precisely where the probe ended up on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a 2.5 mile rugged lump of ice and dust more than 300 million miles from Earth.

As the news emerged today it became clear how narrowly the landing mission averted disaster.

Images released today by the European Space Agency show the movement of the craft:

This image was taken by Philae’s down-looking descent ROLIS imager when it was about 40 m above the surface of Comet. Credit: European Space Agency.

After being released from its Rosetta mothership, Philae descended as planned to a relatively flat area on the smaller of one of the comet’s two lobes.

But two harpoons that were supposed to anchor the craft to the surface failed to deploy and the probe bounced a kilometre (0.6 miles) into space, remaining suspended above the comet for nearly two hours.

Rosetta’s lander Philae is safely on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, as these first two CIVA images confirm. Credit: European Space Agency.

Drawn by the comet’s ultra-low gravity, it slowly fell again and bounced a second time before finally coming to rest – apparently to one side of a large crater.

The craft is partly in the shadow of a cliff-like wall, which could seriously hamper its ability to generate electricity from its solar panels.

This OSIRIS wide-angle camera image shows the position of Rosetta’s lander Philae. Credit: European Space Agency.

By using one of Philae’s instruments to transmit radio signals through the comet, scientists were able to obtain a rough idea of its location.

They believe it to be about a kilometre away from the original landing site.

Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera witnessed Philae’s descent to the surface of Comet. Credit: European Space Agency.

This image from Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera is marked to show the location of the first touchdown point of the Philae lander. Credit: European Space Agency.

This five-image montage of OSIRIS narrow-angle images is being used to try to identify the final touchdown point of Rosetta’s lander Philae. Credit: European Space Agency.