European spacecraft Philae sent its first photograph Thursday, hours after a historic but flawed comet landing.
The black-and-white photograph was sent hours after Philae landed, failing to anchor to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
In an interview with the Europe 1 TV station on Thursday, Jean-Yves Le Gall, head of the French space agency CNES, said the robot probe is now stable.
According to Le Gall, Philae spent the night on the comet and its solar power supply was working, which makes it possible that Philae will transmit data in the future.
The European Space Agency (ESA) on Thursday released the first picture taken by Philae, which shows a rocky surface with one of the lander's three feet.
Harpoons meant to anchor the lander to the surface failed to work properly, causing Philae to bounce twice.
But ESA says the lander is stable. Gerhard Schwehm, a scientist on the Rosetta mission, told The Associated Press on Thursday that it may still be possible to fire the harpoons but in any case the lander is "very healthy.''
More than two decades in the making
Rosetta, carrying Philae, was hoisted into space in 2004, and took more than a decade to reach its target in August this year, having used the gravitational pull of Earth and Mars as slingshots to build up speed.
Rosetta, carrying Philae, was hoisted into space in 2004, and took more than a decade to reach its target in August this year, having used the gravitational pull of Earth and Mars as slingshots to build up speed.
Equipped with 10 instruments, Philae was designed to carry out the first-ever scientific experiments on a comet, providing the jewel in a crown of a massively complicated project more than two decades in the making.
Getting from Earth to a comet that is travelling towards the Sun at 18 kilometres per second (11 miles per second) was a landmark in space engineering and celestial mathematics.
The 1.3-billion-euro ($1.6-billion) Rosetta mission was approved in 1993.
Philae is designed to operate for about 60 hours on a stored battery charge, but several months more if it can get replenishment from sunlight.
The lander complements 11 instruments aboard Rosetta, a three-tonne orbiter that is doing four-fifths of the expected scientific programme from orbit.
On August 13, 2015, "67P" will come within 186 million kilometres of the star.
The mission is scheduled to end in December 2015, when the comet heads out of the inner Solar System.
At this point, Rosetta will once again come close to Earth's orbit, more than 4,000 days after launch.
(with AFP and AP)
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