Philae landed on the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko a year ago

The landing of the Phila probe on the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko is one of the most significant events in the history of space exploration. Despite some failures, the probe was still able to collect a huge amount of information, and almost completely fulfill its mission. Now the European Space Agency has reconstructed the landing process, with the creation of animation, and quite detailed. By the way, it has been exactly one year since the landing itself.

An almost two-minute video shows the descent of the Phila module onto a comet, which lasted about seven hours, plus two hours of probe attempts to gain a foothold on the surface of the comet. During these two hours, the module came into contact with the comet's core three times.

The video was created using all the landing data that scientists have at their disposal. Scientists calculated the trajectory of Philae long ago, using the method of numerical simulation.



The Rosetta mission has added a lot of data to the general body of knowledge about comets, their evolution and composition. In particular, scientists found that the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko was formed from two different comets that once converged. This happened at the dawn of the existence of the solar system, as a result of the collision of two objects. At first, the connection occurred as a result of heating and partial melting of the original bodies, and then as a result of cooling with the formation of an “isthmus”.

In September, ESA scientists already laid out one of the video models of the probe landing on a comet. Now the animation turned out to be much more informative, showing the behavior of the probe during landing, the place of collision with the comet's nucleus and the final “landing”.



The mission of the Philae probe was to study the comet, collect data and transmit it to Earth. Accordingly, scientists are one step closer to understanding the issue of the origin of comets, which can "tell" a lot about the history of the solar system, because comets appeared at the very beginning of the system, billions of years ago.