Philae, the probe that landed on a comet as part of the Rosetta mission, has detected organic molecules in the comet's atmosphere. We don't know exactly what the molecules are yet, but they could hold a key to early life on Earth. Hell, this is a big reason we sent Rosetta all the way to a lonely comet in the first place. 
 
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 Organic molecules are those that contain carbon. We, being carbon-based life forms, are all made of such molecules, but organic molecules may actually have extraterrestrial origins. Simulations have suggested that ultraviolet radiation bombarding icy particles can form organic molecules out in space. In turn, comets could have brought those molecules to Earth, providing the raw materials for life on our planet. 
 
 The Rosetta team was expecting to find organic molecules on the comet, but didn't—and, as yet, still don't—know exactly what kind. It could be simple organic molecules like methane, which would confirm what what we've observed about comets from afar. Even more exciting would be complex ones like amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. Amino acids made of the exact same atoms can be mirror images of one another, either left-handed or right-handed. It's long puzzled scientists why the majoriy of amino acids on Earth are left-handed—perhaps this imbalance can be traced to the amino acids found on a comet. 
 
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 To get a complete picture, scientists will need to analyze samples from beneath the comet's surface, too. The experiment to drill into the comet and analyze samples seems to have failed. There might be another chance it Philae gets more sunlight as the comet speeds toward the sun. Meanwhile Philae has gone dark, but scientists are still hard at work analyzing the data it sent back. [WSJ] 
 
 Top image: European Space Agency 

 Image copyright Esa/Rosetta /Navcam 
 
 The Philae lander has detected organic molecules on the surface of its comet, scientists have confirmed. 
 
 Carbon-containing "organics" are the basis of life on Earth and may give clues to chemical ingredients delivered to our planet early in its history. 
 
 The compounds were picked up by a German-built instrument designed to "sniff" the comet's thin atmosphere. 
 
 Other analyses suggest the comet's surface is largely water-ice covered with a thin dust layer. 
 
 The European Space Agency (Esa) craft touched down on the Comet 67P on 12 November after a 10-year journey. 
 
 Dr Fred Goessmann, principal investigator on the Cosac instrument, which made the organics detection, confirmed the find to BBC News. But he added that the team was still trying to interpret the results. 
 
 It has not been disclosed which molecules have been found, or how complex they are. 
 
 There's a trade off - once it gets too hot, Philae will die as well. There is a sweet spot Prof Mark McCaughrean, Senior science adviser, Esa 
 
 But the results are likely to provide insights into the possible role of comets in contributing some of the chemical building blocks to the primordial mix from which life evolved on the early Earth. 
 
 Preliminary results from the Mupus instrument, which deployed a hammer to the comet after Philae's landing, suggest there is a layer of dust 10-20cm thick on the surface with very hard water-ice underneath. 
 
 The ice would be frozen solid at temperatures encountered in the outer Solar System - Mupus data suggest this layer has a tensile strength similar to sandstone. 
 
 "It's within a very broad spectrum of ice models. It was harder than expected at that location, but it's still within bounds," said Prof Mark McCaughrean, senior science adviser to Esa, told BBC News. 
 
 "People will be playing with [mathematical] models of pure water-ice mixed with certain amount of dust." 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Philae has gone into standby because of low power 
 
 He explained: "You can't rule out rock, but if you look at the global story, we know the overall density of the comet is 0.4g/cubic cm. There's no way the thing's made of rock. 
 
 "It's more likely there's sintered ice at the surface with more porous material lower down that hasn't been exposed to the Sun in the same way." 
 
 After bouncing off the surface at least twice, Philae came to a stop in some sort of high-walled trap. 
 
 "The fact that we landed up against something may actually be in our favour. If we'd landed on the main surface, the dust layer may have been even thicker and it's possible we might not have gone down [to the ice]," said Prof McCaughrean. 
 
 Scientists had to race to perform as many key tests as they could before Philae's battery life ran out at the weekend. 
 
 On re-charge 
 
 A key objective was to drill a sample of "soil" and analyse it in Cosac's oven. But, disappointingly, the latest information suggest no soil was delivered to the instrument. 
 
 Prof McCaughrean explained: "We didn't necessarily see many organics in the signal. That could be because we didn't manage to pick up a sample. But what we know is that the drill went down to its full extent and came back up again." 
 
 "But there's no independent way to say: This is what the sample looks like before you put it in there." 
 
 Scientists are hopeful however that as Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko approaches the Sun in coming months, Philae's solar panels will see sunlight again. This might allow the batteries to re-charge, and enable the lander to perform science once more. 
 
 "There's a trade off - once it gets too hot, Philae will die as well. There is a sweet spot," said Prof McCaughrean. 
 
 He added: "Given the fact that there is a factor of six, seven, eight in solar illumination and the last action we took was to rotate the body of Philae around to get the bigger solar panel in, I think it's perfectly reasonable to think it may well happen. 
 
 "By being in the shadow of the cliff, it might even help us, that we might not get so hot, even at full solar illumination. But if you don't get so hot that you don't overheat, have you got enough solar power to charge the system." 
 
 The lander's Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS), designed to provide information on the elemental composition of the surface, seems to have partially seen a signal from its own lens cover - which could have dropped off at a strange angle because Philae was not lying flat. 
 
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 BERLIN — The European Space Agency's Philae comet lander "sniffed" organic molecules before its primary battery ran out and it shut down, German scientists said. They said it was not yet clear whether the molecules included the complex compounds that make up proteins. One of the key aims of the mission is to discover whether carbon-based compounds, the basis of life as we know it, were brought to early Earth by comets. 
 
 Philae landed on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko after a 10-year journey through space aboard the Rosetta spacecraft, on a mission to unlock details about how planets and perhaps even how life evolved. It wrapped up a 57-hour marathon of scientific experiments on the comet's surface on Saturday as its batteries ran out. Philae's COSAC gas-analyzing instrument was able to sniff the comet's ultra-thin atmosphere and detect the first organic molecules after landing, the DLR German Aerospace Center said. The lander also drilled into the comet's surface, although it is still unclear whether Philae managed to deliver a sample to COSAC for analysis. 
 
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 First results from #CometLanding! Found 6 inches of dust & organics atop -243-degree ice. http://t.co/KfG5O7Mo9H pic.twitter.com/0ZIa8fZndg — Corey S. Powell (@coreyspowell) November 18, 2014 
 
 we could be finding the origin of water and the organics essential for life. THAT is how important the #cometlanding is — Baya Indrayana (@bayainggas) November 12, 2014 
 
 — Reuters 

 The probe that landed on the surface of a comet has discovered organic molecules, the most rudimentary building blocks of life, according to the German agency involved in the mission. 
 
 An instrument aboard the Philae lander detected the molecules after “sniffing” the comet’s atmosphere. An organic compound is one whose molecules contain the carbon atom, the basis of life on earth. 
 
 Scientists...
– Before its battery petered out, the small spacecraft that landed on a moving comet managed to detect organic molecules on the comet, reports NBC News. An instrument aboard the Philae lander essentially sniffed the atmosphere and found evidence of the molecules, which, as the Wall Street Journal explains, are the "rudimentary building blocks of life." It might shed further light on the theory that a comet or comets smacked into a young Earth and delivered the materials necessary for life. While the discovery isn't a huge surprise, it could prove especially interesting if the molecules are complex ones such as amino acids rather than simple ones such as methane, observes the Journal. Further study is needed to figure out what kind of molecules were found, but it looks like scientists won't be getting any help from soil analysis. The lander drilled below the comet's surface to retrieve a frozen sample, which was to be analyzed in the lander's oven, but it now looks like no sample ever made it into the oven, reports the BBC. As scientists pore over data that the lander managed to send before going dark, they continue to hold out hope that the craft, which is equipped with solar panels, will wake up in the coming months as the comet moves closer to the sun. As for the newly discovered organic molecules, "they could hold a key to early life on Earth," writes Sarah Zhang at Gizmodo. "This is a big reason we sent Rosetta all the way to a lonely comet in the first place. "