A European spacecraft robot named Philae made history today as the 220-pound lander successfully touched down on the surface of a comet, as both hurled through space at 41,000 mph. Philae had separated from Rosetta, the mothership, and researchers spent seven extremely tense hours waiting for a signal indicating that Philae had reached its destination. The European Space Agency's celebration was short-lived, though, as it became apparent that there might be a problem with the landing.
The plan was for Philae to gently set itself down on to the comet's uncertain surface and fire two harpoons into it, securing the lander so it could successfully complete a variety of scientific experiments.
"There are some indications that they might not have been fired, which could mean that we are sitting in soft material and we are not anchored. We have to analyze what is the actual situation. We have to know exactly where we land, how did we land," Philae lander manager Stephan Ulamec told reporters on hand at ground control in Darmstadt, Germany.
While ESA workers are now scrambling to try and figure out why the harpoons did not deploy properly or dig in to the surface of the comet, this mission is clearly still a success. While researchers are always studying space and they have studied so much about comet's in general, no one has dared to try and land on one up until now.
Just taking the risk in making contact and having Philae actually touch down on the surface is a great big leap for scientific study. This once-unthinkable action has now been accomplished, and that means the decade of work the ESA put into making this one mission happen has not been for nothing.
Do you think Philae's team will be able to gather enough information to understand exactly what went wrong today while also gathering information from the portion of the mission that has been successful?
Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.
