Video: Flight director updates status of comet lander

Optimistic Europe’s hibernating Philae comet lander can be revived, mission controllers plan to try and contact the spacecraft as soon as January as the search narrows for the probe’s final resting place — a site within arm’s reach of pristine ice and organic matter ripe for analysis if the mission gets a new lease on life.

Europe’s Philae lander radioed home Thursday, sending the first picture from the surface of a comet hours after a dramatic descent that apparently culminated in bouncing hundreds of meters across the distant world before coming to rest.

Europe’s comet-bound Philae probe released from its Rosetta orbiter mothership, snapping photos of the spacecraft that ferried the lander on a ten-year journey from Earth to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.