Rosetta comet mission now stable

The European Space Agency's (ESA) robotic probe Philae, which landed on a comet Wednesday, is stable after falling into trouble initially, media reported Thursday.

The Philae lander, which flew to the comet on the Rosetta spacecraft, earlier failed to tether itself firmly to the comet's surface, when its harpoons could not be fired.

As a result of this, the lander may have bounced hundreds of metres back off the comet's surface after touching down, before settling back again.

The space probe is sending across pictures now and efforts are being made to locate its precise position on the comet, BBC reported.

The first pictures indicate that the lander is sitting at an angle -- perhaps on a slope, or maybe even on its side. However, the team of scientists continues to receive "great data" from Philae, according to the report.

Still, there are concerns about the longer-term stability of Philae, because it is not properly anchored.

There are worries about drilling into the comet, because this too could affect the stability of the lander, the BBC report said, citing Philae project manager Stephan Ulamec.

"We are still not anchored. We are sitting with the weight of the lander somehow on the comet... now we are sitting there, and transmitting, and everything else is something we have to start understanding and keep interpreting," Ulamec was quoted as saying.

Holger Sierks, the principal investigator of the science cameras on Philae's mother ship, Rosetta, which is circling the comet overhead, said his team was now trying to take pictures of the robot on the comet's surface.

These pictures will help controllers understand where the probe came to rest after bouncing off.

The Philae lander reached the surface of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a large mass of ice and dust some 510 million km away, Wednesday after a decade-long chase through space.

The robotic probe, the size of a washing machine, was dropped on the comet from its mother ship Rosetta 13.6 miles away and took seven hours travelling down to the comet's surface.

The Rosetta mission marked the first rendezvous with a comet's orbit and the first soft landing on a comet's surface.

The probe will take pictures of the cometscape and analyse the chemical composition of the comet's surface to test several hypotheses about the origins of life and the universe.