Hallelujah - Philae's been found

Hallelujah - Philae's been found.

The comet landing space probe lost 

Years ago when it went to ground,

Into a shadowy nook tossed.

Out of the sun, it went to sleep.

Mother ship Rosetta searched on.

But from Philae, nary a peep.

Where could the little probe have gone?

Rosetta found the little one,

And sent the good news back to Earth.

Some needed closure thus was done

For the mission - for what it's worth.

Philae with Rosetta in flight,

Cometing into the dark night.

Abydos Orientation

See images to work out what you are looking at and the area of Abydos from many different angles, lighting and magnification.

Colours are an attempt to identify features such as perihelion cliff here, marked in green and orange roughly where I think they are on the Navcam and OSIRIS images below.

Magenta is approximated Philae position. Blue is a prominent egg shaped boulder for reference.

White Quadrangle is roughly the area bounded by the Philae discovery image second image below.

 

Image Credits

FOR NAVCAM
Copyright ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
To view a copy of this licence please visit:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/
FOR OSIRIS
Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DyASP/IDA/
All lines and dotted annotations by Marco Parigi

Here's Philae - I have found him

The wider Picture: Follows are OSIRIS images, first pre-landing - Philae not in this one.

Next two - Post landing - Philae is now visible and perihelion cliff can be identified.

Perihelion cliff marked from CIVA image

Perihelion cliff marked with small red and green dots, from Pre-landing close up of the area.

Follows are recent July 2016 NAVCAM images with a distinct glint (saturates pixel) in exactly the same location identified above.

Second July 2016 NAVCAM image shows same glint in same location - therefore not an artefact.

Following is close ups of the above - The tell tale glint from Philae in the centre of images.

There are several other images not listed here that also show Philae, but this is the location that the ESA will soon announce with much fanfare as a conclusive location for Philae. Close OSIRIS images from 5 km from the surface should now resolve any parts of Philae that may be exposed showing this glint. It could be as little as a foot or leg.

Image Credits

FOR NAVCAM
Copyright ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
To view a copy of this licence please visit:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/
FOR OSIRIS
Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DyASP/IDA/
All lines and dotted annotations by Marco Parigi

67P comet changes near Abydos

Just a couple of boulders that have rolled off the cliffs near Abydos and into Hatmehit below. Happened after a part of the edge of the cliff gave way.

Also, Philae is in one or another of these images if anybody could be bothered to point him out!

Copyright ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

To view a copy of this licence please visit:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/

All dotted annotations by Marco Parigi and A. Cooper

I know what happened to Philae!

EIn a previous post, http://marcoparigi.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/the-effect-on-67p.html I explained the "sieve" effect of opening and closing cracks sifting boulders to generate the distribution of boulders on different gravitational slopes.

This effect, and nucleus surface cracks are ubiquitous on every area of 67P, including Abydos. On the approach to perihelion, cracks around Philae would be expanding and contracting. Philae, the size of a fridge and lying on its side, is destined to be worked and jiggled into a nearby crack. The first effect is to make barriers to communication in both reception and transmission, as both the main radio and secondary are dropped with Philae deeper into the crevice that it was already half way in. Only the extent of its legs stop Philae from sinking many meters down to the below layer of the surface. Only the strength of the sunlight and occasional fortunate alignment of Rosetta with a line of sight to its partly buried antennas enabled any transmission at all.

This would mean that finding Philae is going to be much harder! All that is likely to be visible on the surface is the legs...

 

 Credits: CNES/D. Ducros