let's join rebecca morell at the european space agency's headquarters in germany there for us. >> reporter: yes, well, it's been a very tense morning here, but good news came in earlier this morning, that the signal had been established with the lander, and it looks like the lander is stable on the surface. but we have been hearing more details about a spectacularly hairy landing. it basically touched down, they didn't anchor it to the surface of the koemt, so it bounced back up again into space, so we think it traveled about a kilometer up over the process, over the time period of two hours, came down again, luckily, touched down, bounced again, went up, came down again for a third time. so we're getting a signal from its third position. what we're trying to establish now is whether the lander is on its slide or whether it's on a slope. you can find out more about what's been happening from this report by andy moore. >> reporter: the first close-up view of a comet from a spacecraft sitting on its surface. you can see one of the legs of the lander, apparently resting on rocky, broken terra

. >> let's go live now to our correspondent rebecca morell, who is at the european space agency hq in germany. rebecca, good to see you again. precarious is the word being used there about the state of philae. how precarious, do they know? >> reporter: well, it's maybe getting even a bit more precarious still, so we've had a bit more information about where the lander is actually positioned on the comet. because it traveled so high up in the air on the first bounce, about a kilometer upwards, the comet was spinning underneath. so they think it traveled several hundred meters across the surface of the comet during that time. and the area where it's come down we think is maybe not such a great area. it's very dark. it doesn't get much illumination from the sun. and this is potentially an issue, because the little lander only has 64 hours of battery life. it has solar panels on it, which rely on getting light from the sun to recharge those batteries. and at the moment, there's a question mark over is it in a place where it can get enough sunlight to keep on going. so they've got several