ESA rediscovers lost comet lander Philae

The European Space Agency announced on Monday that it has found its lost Philae lander stuck in a "dark crack" of a comet. Two years after it became the first successful probe to land on the surface on a comet, the Rosetta mission was able to locate the exact position of their tiny spacecraft.

"We were beginning to think that Philae would remain lost forever," said Patrick Martin, the Rosetta mission manager. "It is incredible we have captured this at the final hour."

"With only a month left of the Rosetta mission, we are so happy to have finally imaged Philae and to see it in such amazing detail," said scientist Cecilia Tubiana of the OSIRIS camera team.

Philae was launched on the Rosetta spacecraft in 2004 and, after 10 years in space, it landed on a comet known as 67P as part of a larger mission to gain insight into the origin of life on Earth. The tiny lab was able to send data to Earth for three days before its solar-powered batteries ran out. In then went silent until the comet came closer to the sun, when it briefly re-established contact with the Rosetta team in mid-2015.

Philae apparently bounced around the comet several times after its harpoons were unable to fire, landing it upside down in a shadowy area where there was no light to repower its batteries. The image of the probe shows one of it wedged between rock, one of its three legs stuck into the air.

The Rosetta craft is itself set to crash land into the comet on September 30, ending the 12-year, 1.3 billion euro ($1.4 billion) project.

es/rc (AP, AFP)