Rosetta probe's dizzying bounce revealed: New images emerge of Philae shooting back into space - and its final, lonely resting spot
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The dramatic moment that Rosetta's Philae comet lander bounced back into space has been captured in a remarkable image.
Philae successfully landed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in November, but not before a failure to launch its harpoons and a thruster caused it to bounce twice before settling.
The blurry image captures the rapid motion in which Philae was bounced back. The probe was launched to a height of 0.62 miles (1km) and then to a much lower height of 65ft (20 metres) before coming to rest.
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Bounce back: The blurry image captures the rapid motion in which Philae was launched back out into space. The probe was launched to a height of 0.62 miles (1km) and then to a much lower height of 65ft (20 metres) before coming to rest
Scientists described the comet's ground as being more like a 'trampoline' than rock, owing to its soft and powdery texture, which may have caused the unsteady landing of the probe.
The image was taken by Philae's Civa camera, which was designed to capture the moment the probe settled on the surface.
'That image was a shock because obviously we were not still - we were moving,' co-principal investigator Jean-Pierre Bibring told Jonathan Amos at the BBC.
'It demonstrated together with [other data] that we were not on the comet.
The team suffered an agonising wait before telemetry revealed whether the bounce velocity was high enough for the probe to escape the comet's weak gravity.
Toppled: In this graphic, Civa images have been used to construct a model of the final landing location. Scientists described the ground as being more like a 'trampoline' than rock, owing to its soft and powdery texture, which may have caused the unsteady landing
Reflection: This image, named 'Perihelion Cliff', shows a wall next to the robot, with reflections from Philae shown by the glare marks
Three historic landings: This graphic shows the team's current best guess at how events unfolded. The probe landed on the comet at around 3.30pm GMT on the 12th of November but then bounced twice - first to a height of 0.62 miles (1km) and then to a much lower height of 65ft (20 metres) before coming to rest. It is currently thought to be about 0.62 miles (1km) from its intended landing site
Professor Bibring also revealed a reprocessed Civa image taken by Philae at the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting in San Francisco.
The image, named 'Perihelion Cliff', depicts one of the walls looming over the robot, with reflections from Philae shown by glare marks.
Civa took sharper images of the 67P's terrain, but these were taken after the probe had fallen into a dark ditch, unable to get the sunlight it needed to recharge its batteries.
Another image shows a reconstruction a model of Philae's final landing location.
Rosetta engineers claim the plucky probe could come back to life as soon as March next year, as comet 67P gets closer to the sun.
The probe is currently only receiving around an hour of sunlight during the comet's 12-hour day, with its batteries frozen in temperatures of -170°C.
In a recent Reddit 'ask me anything' session, engineers at mission control said: 'We expect to have enough energy to boot around March next year.
'Then Philae needs to be heated until we can think of starting to charge the battery.
The batteries were meant to be recharged by solar panels, but because Philae hopped a couple of times after the first touchdown, it ended up in shadow.
'It is like trying to power your house with solar panels when you live in Alaska just below the Arctic Circle during the winter,' said Michael Maibaum, Philae systems engineer.
But despite the probe losing power earlier than expected, Philae and the Rosetta spacecraft have already made a number of important discoveries.
Last week, Rosetta found water around the comet calling into question a leading theory about how the Earth got its oceans.
The finding suggests that rocky asteroids rather than icy comets may have been chiefly responsible for bringing water to Earth early in its history.
Unlike the Earth's oceans, the vapour largely consists of water with a different atomic flavour containing deuterium, the 'heavy' isotope of hydrogen.
The amount of deuterium compared with normal hydrogen in the comet's water is three times greater than it is in water on Earth.
This suggests that so-called Jupiter-family comets, such as 67P, cannot be assumed to have created the oceans on Earth.
In contrast, meteorites falling on Earth that originate from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter tend to match the composition of Earth ocean water.
Rough ride: The Osiris camera on the Rosetta orbiter took a number images of Philae as it descended toward its touchdown on the comet on November 12. Images showthe spacecraft rotating, and evidence of the lander's touchdown on the comet surface. One final image, captured 9 minutes after the landing, sees the spacecraft bright against the comet's surface
True colours: The Max Planck Institute in Germany has revealed the true colour of 67P (left). The image reveals what the comet would look like to the human eye. On the right is an image taken taken by a Rosetta instrument dubbed Osiris
Bumpy ride: Ahead of the landing, Rosetta took a number of images of Philae during its daring descent. This view shows the lander's consert antennae deployed. It also shows three lander feet and the Rolis descent camera boom
Major discovery: Scientists recently said that water on the comet was different to that on Earth - suggesting water on our world came from an asteroid, not a comet. Pictured is an artist's impression of the Rosetta spacecraft orbiting comet 67P
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