Although now hibernating on its perch 300m miles away, the stream of data from Philae, Rosetta’s lander, now includes the sound of its historic touch down. And while it’s only a two-second thump, it might be one of the most important noises ever recorded.
The audio was captured by censors embedded in Philae’s three legs, part of the probe’s Surface Electric Sounding and Acoustic Monitoring Experiment (SESAME).
The thump actually comes from Philae’s first attempt at landing, which resulted in a bounce when the spacecraft’s harpoons failed to fire. The SESAME sound is now being analysed, revealing clues about the surface of the comet.
"The Philae lander came into contact with a soft layer several centimeters thick. Then, just milliseconds later, the feet encountered a hard, perhaps icy layer on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko," said Klaus Seidensticker, the engineer in charge of SESAME.
The above sound is just one of many recorded by Rosetta and Philae, including the mysterious comet song.
