Mission controllers say a European probe is pushing ahead with efforts to drill into a comet — though they’re still trying to pin down where exactly the probe is.
The Philae lander on Wednesday became the first spacecraft to touch down on a comet and has since sent its first images from the surface of the body, known as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Scientists hope to drill into the comet to extract some of the material buried beneath the surface of the comet. Stephan Ulamec, head of operations for Philae, said in an online briefing Friday that “we have activated the drill.”
However, he said, it isn’t yet clear whether it will succeed in taking samples. Ulamec said controllers haven’t yet been able to identify where exactly on the comet Philae is.
Scientists have received a steady stream of data from the lander.
However, their job is complicated by the fact that Philae landed next to a cliff that is blocking sunlight from its solar panels.
Planting a thermometer in the surface was Philae’s first so-called “mechanical operation,”
The lander’s primary battery only has power for another day or so and mission controllers are contemplating how they might realign it so that the solar panels can charge the craft.
Two harpoons that should have anchored the washing machine-sized Philae to the surface weren’t deployed during Wednesday’s landing.
That caused the lander to bounce off the comet and drift through the void for two hours before touching down again. After a second, smaller bounce, scientists believe it came to rest in a shallow crater on the comet’s four-kilometre wide body, or nucleus.
Communication with the lander is slow, with signals taking more than 28 minutes to travel between Earth and Philae’s mother ship, the Rosetta orbiter flying above the comet.
