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Last seconds of Philae's (first) touchdown.

9/25/2015

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Picture
As Philae approached touchdown on Comet 67P on 12 November last year, one of the tiny lander's camera systems took a sequence of 7 still images between 67 m and 9 m altitude.  These images have now been blended into the continue video sequence shown below.  At 9 m altitude the image resolution is just less than 1 cm per pixel.  As you may recall, this was the primary landing site but all the anchoring systems failed on touchdown.  As a consequence, Philae 'bounced' and ultimately came to rest in an inhospitable location which curtailed surface operations (due to lack of solar illumination and low temperature)  to a short 3 days or so.

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    Graham Swinerd - I hope to use this page to highlight current major events in space and spacececraft.

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