When the Philae lander touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko last month, it may have scraped the rim of a crater with its landing gear.
Russian scientists suspect that the lander grazed a comet after it was deployed from the Rosetta spacecraft on Nov. 12. The Philae lander bounced multiple times before attaching itself to the comet, and its location is now unknown.
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"It was not a touchdown like the first one, because there was no signature of a vertical deceleration due to a slight dipping of our magnetometer boom as measured during the first and also the final touchdown," ROMAP co-principal investigator Hans-Ulrich Auster said in a statement. "We think that Philae probably touched a surface with one leg only — perhaps grazing a crater rim — and after that the lander was tumbling."
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