Lander manager provides update on Philae status

Less than a month before the end of the mission, Rosetta’s high-resolution camera has revealed the Philae lander wedged into a dark crack on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The images were taken on 2 September by the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera as the orbiter came within 2.7 kilometres of the comet’s surface.

If it were possible to breath in space, one would smell a pungent aroma of rotten eggs, ammonia, vinegary sulphur dioxide and toxic hydrogen cyanide coming from comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, according to sensors on the Rosetta mission.

On the eve of Philae’s landing, the European Space Agency has released its top ten images of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko taken by Rosetta’s navigation camera from its lowest orbit just 10 kilometres from the centre of the nucleus.