Update, November 14, 4:48 p.m. Pacific: Philae is in a location that doesn’t get enough sunlight to operate its solar panels. It is running on the power it left Rosetta with. The ESA has put it to sleep after getting as much science out of it today that they could. It can be woken up as needed (hopefully). Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society has more about this.
Bouncing…who would have expected it to do that on a comet!
Update, November 13, 5:08 p.m. Pacific: Philae bounced three times during landing yesterday (a surface quality they didn’t expect the comet to have, it seems), and while Rosetta still can’t see it, per news reports, the lander is now in a depression near a cliff. There isn’t enough sunlight to power its solar panels, reportedly, and one leg is off the ground.
The ESA team may have decided to use the MUPUS instruments to move the lander – time will tell on that.
They deduced this from instrument readings, I guess, and this imagery from Philae:
Here’s an ESA news release. So far, there are two tweets from Philae’s team:
Wow! Just…wow!
And there is this…location to be determined later:
https://twitter.com/ObservingSpace/status/532597461978583041
And this…
Flight To Wonder 