Philae spacecraft lands on comet

[stevebowers]

Some insider info from someone working on the harpoon experiment;

After long discussions the current status is that we had in fact three landings on a comet. At first touch down both the AOCS thruster and the anchors were not activated for reasons yet not fully understood. Philae bounced two more times. The first bounce took two hours and was possibly up to one kilometre. The second bounce was then only 20m. Since then the Lander appears to be stable and upright on the the surface. FSS is commencing nominal and next radio link is expected for about 7:30 CET. If radio contact is established we are back on the mission track. No deployment though until situation is clear. All instruments are working and we received data until end of radio link. All active instruments concur with the bouncing and a rotation of the lander during the first bounce in fact spin stabilising the Lander.

source
http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.p...ost2254931