Philae’s path on comet 67P
Philae’s path on comet 67P
The Philae research module separated from ESA's Rosetta orbiter on 12 November 2014 in order to land on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. After seven hours of freefall, it touched the Agilkia landing site (top left outside the image) at walking pace as planned. However, Philae could not anchor itself because the anchor harpoons provided for this purpose did not activate. Due to the low gravity, Philae bounced off the surface, rose to a height of more than one kilometre, collided with a cliff edge while falling, touched the comet's surface a second time (TD2) and finally came to a halt after two hours (TD3). The location of TD2 was unknown until recently and could only now be reconstructed. Philae was located in a place with sufficient sunlight to produce enough energy to run its ten experiments for approximately 60 hours.
