Rosetta probe safely anchored on comet's surface

A deep space probe that traveled for 10 years and 4 billion miles to reach a massive comet is safely anchored on the surface despite technical problems, pictures beamed 300 million miles back to Earth showed on Thursday.

The Rosetta lander and probe, launched by the European Space Agency (ESA), could deliver valuable information about the origin of Earth’s water, which some scientists suspect came from a barrage of comets crashing into the planet during its infancy. That water set the stage for the development of life on our world.

The box-shaped 220-pound lander, named Philae, touched down on schedule at about 11 a.m. Eastern time. But during Philae's descent to the comet, harpoons designed to anchor it failed to deploy, raising concerns the lander might drift back into space.

The ESA published an image on Thursday of the lander — virtually weightless in its current environment — on the comet's bleak, rocky surface. It said data showed the lander had twice bounced back into space after touching down on Wednesday, but then came to rest.

On Wednesday, Jean-Jaques Dordain, director general of the ESA, congratulated the 20 nations that cooperated to make the landing possible.

“We are the first to have done it, and that will stay forever,” he said in Darmstadt, Germany, at the agency’s mission control.

The ESA said that even if the landing had failed, the $1.6 billion project could still perform about 80 percent of the intended scientific mission, following the comet on its path around the sun.

Wednesday’s success caps the long journey by Rosetta, launched in 2004 to study the 2.5-mile-wide 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet. Philae is the first spacecraft ever to land on a comet.

Scientists have likened the trillion or so comets orbiting the sun to time capsules that are virtually unchanged since the earliest moments of the solar system.

"By studying one in enormous detail, we can hope to unlock the puzzle of all of the others," said Mark McCaughrean, a senior scientific adviser to the mission.

The ESA celebrated the cosmic achievement after sweating through a tense seven-hour countdown that began when Philae separated from the space probe as they and the comet hurtled through space at 41,000 mph.

During the lander's descent, scientists were powerless to do anything but watch, because the vast distance from Earth — 311 million miles — makes it impossible to send instructions in real time. It takes more than 28 minutes for a command from mission control to reach Rosetta.

Two hours after the lander separated, scientists re-established contact with it.

Comets are made up of rock and ice left over from the creation of the solar system more than 4 billion years ago. Scientists believe that countless comets swirl, frozen, in an area called the Oort Cloud that envelops our solar system. Every so often, one of these comets is nudged into the inner solar system.

The ice turns to vapor when the comet approaches the heat of our star. Rosetta and Philae will study how that happens as their comet moves closer to the sun.

Rosetta had to slingshot three times around Earth and once around Mars before it could work up enough speed to chase down the comet, which it reached in August. Rosetta and the comet have been traveling in tandem ever since.

Rosetta and Philae plan to accompany the comet as it hurtles by the sun and becomes increasingly active in the rising temperatures. Using 21 instruments, the spacecraft will collect data that scientists hope will help explain the origins and evolution of celestial bodies and maybe even life on Earth.

Al Jazeera and wire services