Following a successful day in space yesterday, which saw humankind land a spacecraft on a comet for the first time ever, the Philae Lander has now sent back the first close-up images of the surface it now rests upon.
The image above is a two-photo composite captured by the spacecraft's CIVA imaging system, showing that the lander is now safely on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In fact, if you look at the bottom left of the image, you can see one of the lander's three feet!
The image certainly makes the surface look fairly uneven, and not the flat surface that you may expect such a craft to land on. That may well account for some of the speculation about the craft's slightly hair-raising landing yesterday.
The European Space Agency plans to release more images later today during a press briefing about the mission. [ESA]
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