Space and Physics
PUBLISHED
What does it look like to land on a comet? Thanks to this new video from ESA, you can now find out.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.The footage was made by stitching together seven images from the landing of Philae on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 12 November 2014. They were taken by the downward-facing ROLIS (Rosetta Lander Imaging System) camera on the lander.
The images were taken 10 seconds apart, but the gaps have been interpolated show the approach in real-time. The movie shows the view as seen by Philae as it descended from 67 to 9 meters (220 to 30 feet). Sadly, there’s no such footage yet of the actual landing, although we know there are some blurry images of that event.
So, we'll have to make do with this for now. You can check out the video below.
