Philae - Landing and Science Operations on a comet

Abstract

Philae is a comet Lander, part of Rosetta which is a Cornerstone Mission of the ESA Horizon 2000 programme. Although Rosetta is not a low cost mission, the Lander, a contribution by an international consortium including scientific institutes, was provided with relatively moderate funding. Philae landed successfully on comet 67P/ Churyumov Gerasimenko on November 12, 2014. After several bounces Philae came to rest on the surface of the comet nucleus and sent back to Earth a plentitude of scientific data. All ten instruments of its payload have been operated at least once. Due to the fact that the Lander could not be anchored, the originally planned first scientific sequence had to be modified. The final landing area is not very well illuminated by the sun so that long term science operations had to be postponed to closer heliocentric distances. The paper will present the latest results on the anticipated re-activation of the Lander. Rosetta is an ESA mission with contributions from its member states and NASA. Rosetta's Philae lander is provided by a consortium led by DLR, MPS, CNES and ASI with additional contributions from Hungary, UK, Finland, Ireland and Austria.