Although the European Space Agency's Philae comet lander has been incommunicado since July 9, today marks what's easily one of the most significant days in the lander's lifetime. That's because scientists across the globe working with the plucky robot have just released their first wave of discoveries and scientific research collected during Philae's slow rendezvous and inadvertently bouncy landing on comet C-G last fall. The research is published in seven papers in the journal Science.

"Last November we landed on this comet—a completely new world unlike anything humans have ever seen, and so much more different than we expected or could expect" Stephan Ulamec, the head of the Philae lander mission at the German Aerospace Center, told Popular Mechanics. In conducting this first wave of research, he says, "we've discovered that the surface of the comet is quite complex and variable, with a few structures that remind one of Mars, and that there is a high content of organic material."

We asked several scientists behind the new research to walk us through some of the most interesting findings, and Ulamec gave us an in-depth update on the the future of the Philae Mission.

Dust cloud seen after Philae's landing ESA

A strange new cometscape

"The surface is quite complex and variable, with a few structures that remind one of Mars."

One of the most interesting discoveries announced today was, ironically, only made possible by Philae's unfortunate failed landing. That's when the bot bounced several times across the surface of the low-gravity comet after its downward thruster and twin harpoons both malfunctioned and failed to anchor it.

Jens Biele, a geophysicist with the Philae team, lead a research group that not only mapped the bouncy landing with extreme detail, but also used the footprints left by Philae's unexpected journey (along with the lander's internal measurements) to investigate the makeup and hardness of the comet's topsoil. "That's data that you absolutely have to travel to the comet to acquire, there's no way we could have figured this out from orbit," says Biele.

He reports that Philae's initial touchdown site, (originally called "Site J," now named Agilkia) is covered with a dust of rocky regolith about 8 inches deep. "It's soft like snow," he says, noting that even just a decade ago, many scientists were still unsure if a comet like C-G would have been covered in many, many feet of downy-soft dust. If that were true, it would have enveloped Philae.

The comet surface from a distance of 3 km. ESA/Rosetta/Philae/ROLIS/DLR

What's doubly exciting, he says, is that Philae was also able to get data on the hardness of the Abydos site—the dark, still un-photographed region where the lander sits today. It's another silver lining to the anchoring failure. We can deduce from the failure of Philae's weak, hammer-like tool to dig into the soil of the dark site, he says, that it has to be "at least as hard as pumice." He says the fact that different parts of the comet could have such drastically different hardnesses is a bit unexpected.

Speaking of pumice, another study discovered that the entire comet is quite porous, with somewhere between 75 to 85 percent porosity. That means less than 25 percent of the comet is solid material. In addition, data gathered from Philae for two separate imaging studies also has researchers reporting that most of comet C-G's landscape has been shaped by erosion, giving the surface of the comet many features that Ulamec, the leader of the Philae lander team, says look a bit "Martian."

Expected chemicals, new organics

Using two separate chemical-sensing instruments on board Philae, another two studies also report the chemical makeup of the C-G comet. Both found that it has much more organic material than expected. (To be clear, "organic material" means molecules with carbon in them, not materials that are made by or directly make lifeforms.) According to Fred Goesmann, a planetary scientist behind one of the studies that used Philae's mass spectrometer (called COSAC), four new organic compounds never before detected on comets were also discovered here—methyl isocyanate, acetone, propionaldehyde, and acetamide—alongside 12 known ones.

"It's soft like snow."

Goesmann says that knowing the exact makeup of C-G is hugely important not just for understanding comets and cometary evolution, but for understanding the history of our solar system—Earth included. "You can think of comets, because they were formed long ago in the outer solar system, as ... a sort of time capsule of knowledge," he says. Goesmann also says this new chemical data could shed light on the "the starting conditions for the origin of life on Earth," given our planet's long history of comet impacts.

Goesmann says that his only disappointment is that Philae has, as of now, still been unable to drill into comet C-G and take a fresh core sample, which could then be chemically analyzed. But Ulamec, the leader of the Philae lander team, says that still could be in the works.

Mission update

Ulmac spoke in detail about the current statues of the Philae lander, which has not been in contact with the Rosetta orbiter for several weeks. He reports that that last contact let us know that the lander "is getting improved illumination during the day, but is in no danger of overheating," he says. For the most part, everything on board the lander is fine. "At the moment, our one big problem is communication," he admits. "We're not able to build up a reliable communication link between the lander and Rosetta. We'd like to strengthen that link by flying Rosetta closer to the comet, but because we are getting closer to perihelion (the closest point in the orbit toward the sun) we can only get so close without worrying about damaging [Rosetta]," he says.

Currently the plan is to keep sending Rosetta what Ulmac calls "blind commands"—blasting repeated orders to operate some of the lander's on-board scientific equipment despite the lack of a two-way connection. That way, when Philae does link back up, it will be able to send back instrument data, not just "housekeeping data," on the current status of the robot's parts. At least, that's the hope.

By October or November, as C-G starts to flee from the sun after its perihelion, that's when Ulamec hopes they'll be able to move Rosetta in closer, establish a two-way link for at least one hour, and complete the one last big piece of the lander mission: fire up the drill, grab a sample, and analyze it. "But it's just not possible for me to say with any assurance what the chances are that that will happen," Ulamec says.

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