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*** Update *** Philae lander could be sat on comet full of aliens

Rosetta’s lander Philae is safely on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, as these first two CIVA images confirm. One of the lander’s three feet can be seen in the foreground. The image is a two-image mosaic. The full panoramic from CIVA will be delivered in this afternoon’s press briefing at 13:00 GMT/14:00 CET.

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"The comet seems to be emitting a 'song' in the form of oscillations in the magnetic field in the comet's environment," the ESA says. "It is being sung at 40 -50 millihertz, far below human hearing, which typically picks up sound between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. To make the music audible to the human ear, the frequencies have been increased by a factor of about 10,000." Here's what that sounds like

Hundreds of millions of miles from Earth, a man-made object was flung at a comet Wednesday — and now it's sticking to the rock as it hurtles through space. "We are on the comet," Stephan Ulamec, Philae Lander Manager, announced Wednesday, marking a historic achievement. The news came after the European Space Agency endured tense hours of uncertainty following the lander's separation from the Rosetta spacecraft, as scientists awaited a message from the lander that would tell them whether it landed safely — or suffered a calamity. As Ulamec said the lander was secured to the comet's surface by ice screws and the craft had fired its tethering harpoons — and it was now doing its job and communicating with Earth — he sparked an uproar of applause from workers and spectators at the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany.

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But while the European agency says the lander is in "great shape," it also says that additional analysis suggests that Philae's harpoons did not fire, and that the agency is looking at trying again. It took 10 years for the Philae lander to reach a point where it could be sent toward Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The ESA said this morning that it had received a signal from the lander as it headed toward its rendezvous with the comet, indicating that if all went well, the lander would be able to communicate and send photos from the comet's surface. We'll update this post with developments from space. You can also follow the news at the ESA's Rosetta page, and at NASA TV, starting at 9 a.m. ET. Update at 11:50 a.m. ET: 'Harpoons Did Not Fire'

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After analyzing telemetry data from the Philae lander, ESA says it seems that the craft's harpoons didn't fire as first thought. Adding that the lander is in "great shape," the agency says its engineers are looking into options for retrying the harpoon operation, which is meant to secure the craft to the comet's surface. In a tweet, the agency says the lander "made a fairly gentle touch down on #67P based on amount of landing gear damping." Update at 11:05 a.m. ET: Philae Has Landed In a first, the Philae lander is on the comet's surface. We've updated the top of this post to reflect the news. Update at 10:15 a.m. ET: New Images, And 'A Boot'
(Perspective)

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"Everything looks really, really good," says Stephan Ulamec, Philae program manager at DLR, in a progress report. The ESA has released new images from the area around the comet, including one shot of Philae breaking away from the Rosetta craft and heading toward 67P. Another image shows the lander from the view of its parent spacecraft. The two scientists who discovered the comet 45 years ago — Klim Ivanovych Churyumov and Svetlana Ivanovna Gerasimenko — are in the unique position today of watching humanity's attempt to land on it. Churyumov and Svetlana Ivanovna Gerasimenko took part in an event hosted by the ESA that was equal parts news conference and viewing party. When Gerasimenko was asked the tongue-in-cheek question of how she likes the comet that she and her colleague spotted decades ago, she responded by saying, "I like the form very much — it reminds me of a boot."

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UPDATE: Dec. 14, 2014: Where did our planet get its oceans? Among planetary scientists, this is one of the most important and perplexing questions about the origins of Earth. One popular theory holds that water was brought to Earth by the ancient impacts of comets and asteroids. However, new data from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft indicate that terrestrial water did not come from comets like 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The findings were published Dec. 10th in the journal Science. Researchers agree that water must have been delivered to Earth by small bodies at a later stage of the planet’s evolution. It is, however, not clear which family of small bodies is responsible. There are three possibilities: asteroid-like small bodies from the region of Jupiter; Oort cloud comets formed inside of Neptune's orbit; and Kuiper Belt comets formed outside of Neptune's orbit. The key to determining where the water originated is in its isotopic “flavor.” That is, by measuring the level of deuterium – a heavier form of hydrogen. By comparing the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in different objects, scientists can identify where in the solar system that object originated. And by comparing the D/H ratio, in Earth’s oceans with that in other bodies, scientists can aim to identify the origin of our water. Auroras Underfoot The Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) instrument has found that the composition of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s water vapor is significantly different from that found on Earth. The value for the D/H ratio on the comet is more than three times the terrestrial value. This is among the highest-ever-measured values in the solar system. That means it is very unlikely that comets like 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko are responsible for the terrestrial water. The D/H ratio is the ratio of a heavier hydrogen isotope, called deuterium, to the most common hydrogen isotope. It can provide a signature for comparison across different stages of a planet's history. “We knew that Rosetta’s in situ analysis of this comet was always going to throw us surprises," said Matt Taylor, Rosetta’s project scientist from the European Space Research and Technology Center, Noordwijk, the Netherlands. “The bigger picture of solar-system science, and this outstanding observation, certainly fuel the debate as to where Earth got its water.” Almost 30 years ago (1986) the mass spectrometers on board the European Giotto mission to comet Halley could, for the first time, determine D/H ratio in a comet. It turned out to be twice the terrestrial ratio. The conclusion at that time was that Oort cloud comets, of which Halley is a member, cannot be the responsible reservoir for our water. Several other Oort cloud comets were measured in the next 20 years, all displaying very similar D/H values compared to Halley. Subsequently, models that had comets as the origin of the terrestrial water became less popular. This changed when, thanks to the European Space Agency's Herschel spacecraft, the D/H ratio was determined in comet Hartley 2, which is believed to be a Kuiper Belt comet. The D/H ratio found was very close to our terrestrial value -- which was not really expected. Most models on the early solar system claim that Kuiper Belt comets should have an even higher D/H ratio than Oort cloud comets because Kuiper Belt objects formed in a colder region than Oort cloud comets. The new findings of the Rosetta mission make it more likely that Earth got its water from asteroid-like bodies closer to our orbit and/or that Earth could actually preserve at least some of its original water in minerals and at the poles. “Our finding also disqualifies the idea that Jupiter family comets contain solely Earth ocean-like water,” said Kathrin Altwegg, principal investigator for the ROSINA instrument from the University of Bern, Switzerland, and lead author of the Science paper. “It supports models that include asteroids as the main delivery mechanism for Earth’s oceans.” Comets are time capsules containing primitive material left over from the epoch when the sun and its planets formed. Rosetta's lander obtained the first images taken from a comet's surface and will provide analysis of the comet's possible primordial composition. Rosetta will be the first spacecraft to witness at close proximity how a comet changes as it is subjected to the increasing intensity of the sun's radiation. Observations will help scientists learn more about the origin and evolution of our solar system and the role comets may have played in seeding Earth with water, and perhaps even life.