new pictures start getting released:



Comet on 16 December 2015 – OSIRIS wide-angle camera
Released 04/01/2016 11:09 am
Copyright ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

OSIRIS wide-angle camera image taken on 16 December 2015, when Rosetta was 111.9 km from the nucleus of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The scale is 10.96 m/pixel.

Distance Rosetta ↔ 67P/CG 111.912 km
Distance 67P/CG ↔ Sun 284207584 km 1.899810 AU
Distance Rosetta ↔ Earth 253230784 km 1.692743 AU

and here the christmas view from rosetta:



Comet on 25 December 2015 – OSIRIS narrow-angle camera
Released 04/01/2016 11:18 am
Copyright ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

Single-frame OSIRIS narrow-angle camera image taken on 25 December 2015, when Rosetta was 75 km from the nucleus of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The scale is 1.37 m/pixel.

Distance Rosetta ↔ 67P/CG 75.029 km
Distance 67P/CG ↔ Sun ...... 294393824 km 1.967901 AU
Distance Rosetta ↔ Earth .... 247616288 km 1.655213 AU

and here is a recent image:



Comet on 6 January 2016 – OSIRIS narrow-angle camera
Released 08/01/2016 3:48 pm
Copyright ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

Single frame OSIRIS narrow-angle camera image taken on 6 January 2015, when Rosetta was 86.8 km from the nucleus of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The scale is 1.57 m/pixel. The image exposure time was 0.24 seconds.

Distance Rosetta ↔ 67P/CG 86.827 km
Distance 67P/CG ↔ Sun ...... 308332800 km 2.061077 AU
Distance Rosetta ↔ Earth ... 239505424 km 1.600995 AU

more scientific results are getting released/published:



Infrared observations of water ice in Imhotep
Released 13/01/2016 7:00 pm
Copyright Comet images: ESA/Rosetta/NavCam–CC BY–SA IGO 3.0; VIRTIS images and data: ESA/Rosetta/VIRTIS/INAF-IAPS, Rome/OBS DE PARIS-LESIA/DLR; G. Filacchione et al (2016)

Data collected by Rosetta’s Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) between September and November 2014 provide definitive evidence of water ice in the Imhotep region on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
The locations of the two icy regions, spanning a few tens of metres across, are shown in navigation camera images and in VIRTIS colour images. The ice is associated with cliff walls and debris falls and has an average temperature of about –120ºC.
The bottom set of images shows the water-ice abundance with respect to dark comet material under different grain mixing regimes, where “areal” mixing concerns larger water-ice grains (millimetre-sized) side-by-side with dark grains, and “intimate” mixing concerns grains a few tens of micrometres mixed with the dark material in the same pixel.
The spectral analysis shown in the centre of the graphic is for one pixel in region 1 (labelled with the arrow in the abundance map) and shows the actual spectrum (with error bars) compared to the best-fit model. It shows that 1.2% of the pixel comprises pure water ice with a large grain size (1.96 mm) and 98.8% is an intimate mix of 3.4% water ice with peak grain size 58 microns, and the remaining amount dark material.

more information can be found in:

“Exposed water ice on the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko,” by G. Filacchione et al is published in the journal Nature.

Nice

set of older images just released:



Released 04/02/2016 10:00 am
Copyright ESA/Rosetta/NavCam – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

These images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko were taken by Rosetta’s navigation camera between August and November 2014.

Top row, left to right: Comet pictured on 6 August 2014, at a distance of 96 km; 14 August, at a distance of 100 km; 22 August, at a distance of 64 km; 14 September, at a distance of 30 km.

Bottom row, left to right: Comet pictured on 24 September, at a distance of 28 km; 24 October, at a distance of 10 km; 26 October, at a distance of 8 km; 6 November, at a distance of 30 km.

statement from esa on lander status:

Rosetta’s lander faces eternal hibernation
12 February 2016

Silent since its last call to mothership Rosetta seven months ago, the Philae lander is facing conditions on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from which it is unlikely to recover.
Rosetta, which continues its scientific investigations at the comet until September before its own comet-landing finale, has in recent months been balancing science observations with flying dedicated trajectories optimised to listen out for Philae. But the lander has remained silent since 9 July 2015.
“The chances for Philae to contact our team at our lander control centre are unfortunately getting close to zero,” says Stephan Ulamec, Philae project manager at the German Aerospace Center, DLR. “We are not sending commands any more and it would be very surprising if we were to receive a signal again.”
... on the evening of 14–15 November 2014, Philae fell into hibernation.
...
On 13 June 2015, the lander finally hailed the orbiting Rosetta and subsequently transmitted housekeeping telemetry, including information from its thermal, power and computer subsystems.
Subsequent analysis of the data indicated that the lander had in fact already woken up on 26 April 2015, but had been unable to send any signals until 13 June.
...
After 13 June, Philae made a further seven intermittent contacts with Rosetta in the following weeks, with the last coming on 9 July. However, the communications links that were established were too short and unstable to enable any scientific measurements to be commanded.
...