The European Space Agency landed a probe on a comet on Wednesday, an historic moment in space exploration and the climax of a 10-year-journey, but an anchoring system issue could hamper planned investigations into the origins of Earth and the solar system.
The 220-pound lander, which is basically weightless on the comet's surface, touched down at 11 a.m. after a seven-hour descent from its orbiting mothership Rosetta, which is now located 300 million miles from Earth.
During the free-fall to the comet's surface, harpoons designed to anchor the probe, named Philae, didn't deploy. Flight directors are not thinking out other options to make sure the lander doesn't drift back into space, according to Reuters.
"The lander may have lifted off again," Stefan Ulamec, Philae lander manager at the DLR German Aerospace Center, told the publication. "Maybe today we just didn't land once, but landed twice. Hopefully we are sitting there on the surface and can continue our science sequence."
Scientists hope that samples drilled out from the comet, called 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, will unlock details about the planets, possibly even life, evolved, as the rock and ice that make up comets preserve organic molecules like a time-capsule.
Comets date back some 4.6 billion years ago, and scientists suspect they delivered water to early Earth.
"How audacious, how exciting, how unbelievable to be able to dare to land on a comet," NASA's director of Planetary Science, Jim Green, said at the European Space Operations Centre in Germany after the successful touchdown, according to Reuters.
The mission, which took 10 years, five months and four days, cost close to 1.4 billion euros ($1.8 billion.) One of the records set by the mission was that Rosetta became the first spacecraft to orbit a comet rather than fly past to take pictures.
"What really nails this experience for me are the images," Daniel Brown, an expert in astronomy at Nottingham Trent University, said via email after three-legged Philae had relayed data and images back to Earth as it moved toward the comet.
"Especially exciting will be getting the results of the samples recovered from below the surface and seeing their chemical composition," he said.
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