On Nov. 12, 2014, a European spacecraft named Philae landed on Comet 67P. The European Space Agency’s Philae probe detached from the Rosetta orbiter prior to its monumental arrival.
It was supposed to use harpoons to secure itself onto the surface, but the harpoons never fired.
When it touched down, it immediately bounced back up into space. Following the initial impact, Philae was propelled half a mile above the surface of the comet before the pull of gravity drew it back down.
Philae actually landed three different times on Comet 67P. After the initial touchdown, the craft leaped upward and traveled across the comet for a duration of two hours, hitting the surface once more before Rosetta’s cameras were no longer able to monitor its position.
Philae was missing for almost two years before scientists found it. Photographs captured by Rosetta revealed the location of Philae resting inside a shadowy gap on the comet, which is shaped like a rubber duck.
Scientists figured it was stuck in a shady spot where sunlight couldn’t reach its solar panels. To maintain consistent operation on the surface, Philae relied on solar power, meaning it had to be positioned correctly toward the sun.
Nevertheless, Philae possessed a reserve of battery power that enabled it to function for over two days while on the surface. That allowed the probe to perform some science with its 10 instruments in the time it had.
Most notably, Philae found organic molecules that had never been detected on a comet before.
The Rosetta orbiter continued to orbit Comet 67P until September 2016. It was in that month, just weeks before Rosetta itself landed on the comet on Sept. 30, 2016, that the spacecraft rediscovered the Philae lander lying on its side in a rocky crevice.
