The Obelisk

The Obelisk

What is the secret

of this obelisk

we are to uncover..?

That:

The French historian 

The hieroglyphs 

The Rosetta Stone

The ancient civilization

The Philae lander

The Rosetta orbiter

The shadow

The Solar System

and

the comets 

All of these

are simply made

of the SUN..?!

Philae is the island in the river Nile on which an obelisk was found that had a bilingual inscription including the names of Cleopatra and Ptolemy in Egyptian hieroglyphs. This provided the French historian Jean-François Champollion with the final clues that enabled him to decipher the hieroglyphs of the Rosetta Stone and unlock the secrets of the civilisation of ancient Egypt. Just as the Philae Obelisk and the Rosetta Stone provided the keys to an ancient civilisation, the Philae lander and the Rosetta orbiter aim to unlock the mysteries of the oldest building blocks of our Solar System - comets.

Philae had landed in a dark shadow after a bouncy triple touchdown Wednesday. It did not get enough sunlight to recharge its batteries sufficiently to extend its mission beyond its initial 60-hour work program. Mission engineers do not rule out making contact with the lander in the coming months as Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko moves closer to the Sun.

The touchdown did not go entirely as planned -- hardly a surprise in an operation some gloomily predicted had only a one-in-two chance of success. Philae landed smack in the middle of its targeted site, but a pair of anchoring harpoons failed to deploy. It rebounded, touched down again, bounced up once more and then landed for the third time at a place believed to be about a kilometre (half a mile) from the landing site.

Philae found itself in the shadow of a cliff, tilted at an angle that left one of its three legs pointed to the sky.