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ESA's Philae probe 'bounced' twice during historic comet landing [i]The first space probe to touch down on the surface of a comet did so three times before it finally came to rest in the shadow of a cliff. The European Space Agency (ESA) on Thursday (Nov 13) released photos captured by the Rosetta mission's Philae lander showing the three-legged probe was on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The probe, which on Wednesday separated from the Rosetta spacecraft and descended for seven hours to the comet's surface, did, in fact, land, but where exactly is still not known. "We understood that we... bounced two times and finally stopped at a place we haven't entirely located," said Jean-Pierre Bibring, the Philae lander's lead scientist. "We sort of got close to the place that we are, where we think we are, which is not very close to [where] we wanted to [be], but not very far away."[/i]
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