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ByFrankJordans The Associated Press BERLIN A shadow is cast — quite literally — across Europe's historic mission to land on and explore a comet. Scientists say the landing craft not only bounced twice, it also came to rest next to a cliff that's blocking sunlight from its solar panels. The good news is that the lander Philae is stable and in good health: Its sci- entific instruments have already begun gathering reams of data to send back to Earth, including the first pictures taken from the surface of a comet. The bad news is that its useful lifetime may now be much shorter. With just a day or two left before the lander's primary battery is exhausted, scientists are considering what acrobatic maneuvers to risk in order to get the solar panels out of the shadows so they can keep Philae going for a few more months. The first photos reveal the comet's rocky terrain, including one that shows one of the lander's three feet in the corner of the frame. They indicate that Philae's instruments are working properly, said Jean-Pierre Bibring, the lander's lead scientist at the European Space Agency. Before deciding whether to try to adjust the lander, scientists will spend the next day or two collect- ing as much data as possi- ble while its primary bat- tery still has energy. The lander's solar panels were designed to provide an ex- tra hour of battery life each day after that, but this may not be possible now. "We see that we get less solar power than we planned for," said Koen Geurts of the lander team. "This, of course, has an impact on our ... capabil- ities to conduct science for an extended period of time," he said. "Unfortu- nately this is not a situation that we were hoping for." The lander scored a historic first Wednesday, touching down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gera- simenko after a decade- long, 4 billion-mile (6.4 billion-kilometer) journey through space aboard its mother ship, Rosetta. The comet is streaking through space at 41,000 mph some 311 million miles from Earth. The landing was beset by a series of problems that be- gan when thrusters meant to push Philae onto the comet failed. Then two har- poons, which should have anchored the lander to the surface, weren't deployed. This caused the lander to bounce off the comet and drift through the void for two hours before touching down again. After a sec- ond smaller bounce, scien- tists believe it came to rest in a shallow crater on the comet's 2½ mile-wide body, or nucleus. "We are just in the shadow of a cliff," Bibring said, adding that photos in- dicate the cliff could be just a few yards (meters) away. "We are in a shadow per- manently, and that is part of the problem." Bibring and his col- leagues stressed that the data they'll be able to col- lect with the primary bat- teries alone will have made the landing worthwhile. "A lot of science is get- ting covered now," he said, noting that soon scientists will get their hands on a to- mography of the comet and data showing whether the matter it is made of is mag- netized. But because the lander is just resting on the comet with nothing but low grav- ity holding it down, Philae will have to hold off on one of the most important ex- periments — drilling into the comet to extract some of the material buried be- neath the surface. Scientists want to ana- lyze this material because it has remained almost unchanged for 4.5 billion years, making it something of a cosmic time capsule. "Drilling without be- ing anchored and without knowing how you are on the surface is dangerous. We might just tip over the lander," said Stephan Ul- amec, head of operations for Philae. Gravity on the comet is 1/100,000th that of Earth, meaning the wash- ing machine-sized lander weighs just 0.04 ounces (1 gram) there. Ground controllers will likely wait until the first big batch of data has been collected before attempting to adjust the lander so that its solar panels can catch the sun and charge its bat- teries. Communication with the lander is slow, with signals taking more than 28 minutes to travel be- tween Earth and the Ro- setta orbiter flying above the comet. SOLAR PANELS BLOCKED Sp ac e ag en cy : Co me t la nd er ends up in shadow of cliff PHILAE—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS The combination photo of different images taken with the CIVA camera system released by the European Space Agency on Thursday shows Rosetta's lander Philae on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. EVAN VUCCI — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey listens, at right, as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel testifies Thursday before the House Armed Services committee hearing on the Islamic State group. By Donna Cassata The Associated Press WASHINGTON The Penta- gon warned Congress on Thursday that the long, drawn-out military cam- paign against Islamic State militants is just beginning and could expand to in- clude modest numbers of U.S. forces fighting along- side Iraqi troops. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Army Gen. Mar- tin Dempsey, the chair- man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered a cautious assessment of the progress in the three-month-old war against Islamic extremists who brutally rule large sec- tions of Iraq and Syria. It was more than a sta- tus report. President Barack Obama is seeking congres- sional approval for $5.6 billion to expand the U.S. mission in Iraq and send up to 1,500 more American troops. The administration is also pressing for reautho- rization of its plan to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels, with that mandate expiring Dec. 11. Hagel said the coalition, which has grown with 16 new members since Sep- tember, has made prog- ress, with the militants' ad- vances stalling and in some instances, reversed by air strikes and other military operations. But he maintained that the struggle will be long and difficult in what could be a multiyear campaign. Dempsey said the Iraqi forces are doing a better job, but he said an effort to move into Mosul, now held by IS, or to restore the border with Syria would require more complex operations. "I'm not predicting at this point that I would rec- ommend that those forces in Mosul and along the bor- der would need to be accom- panied by U.S. forces, but we're certainly considering it," Dempsey told the House Armed Services Committee. He added that the U.S. has a modest force in Iraq now, serving as advisers and trainers, and "any ex- pansion of that, I think, would be equally modest. I just don't foresee a cir- cumstance when it would be in our interest to take this fight on ourselves with a large military contingent." US troops' role in Iraq could expand ASSESSMENT By Deb Riechmann The Associated Press ISTANBUL Militant lead- ers from the Islamic State group and al-Qaida gath- ered at a farm house in northern Syria last week and agreed on a plan to stop fighting each other and work together against their opponents, a high- level Syrian opposition official and a rebel com- mander have told The As- sociated Press. Such an accord could present new difficulties for Washington's strat- egy against the IS group. While warplanes from a U.S.-led coalition strike militants from the air, the Obama administration has counted on arming "moder- ate" rebel factions to push them back on the ground. Those rebels, already con- sidered relatively weak and disorganized, would face far stronger opposition if the two heavy-hitting mil- itant groups now are work- ing together. IS — the group that has seized nearly a third of Syria and Iraq with a cam- paign of brutality and be- headings this year — and al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria, known as the Nusra Front, have fought each other bit- terly for more than a year to dominate the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Associated Press re- ported late last month on signs that the two groups appear to have curtailed their feud with informal lo- cal truces. Their new agree- ment, according to the sources in rebel groups op- posed to both IS and Nusra Front, would involve a promise to stop fighting and team up in attacks in some areas of northern Syria. Cooperation, however, would fall short of unify- ing the rival groups, and experts believe any pact be- tween the two sides could easily unravel. U.S. intel- ligence officials have been watching the groups closely and say a full merger is not expected soon — if ever. A U.S. official with access to intelligence about Syria said the American intelli- gence community has not seen any indications of a shift in the two groups' strategy, but added that he could not rule out tac- tical deals on the ground. The official insisted on an- onymity because he said he was not authorized to speak publicly about the subject. According to a Syrian opposition official speak- ing in Turkey, the meeting took place Nov. 2 in the town of Atareb, west of Aleppo, starting at around midnight and lasting un- til 4 a.m. The official said the meeting was closely followed by members of his movement, and he is certain that an agreement was reached. The official said about seven top mili- tant leaders attended. A second source, a com- mander of brigades affil- iated with the Western- backed Free Syrian Army who is known as Abu Musafer, said he also had learned that high-ranking members of Nusra and IS met on Nov. 2. RIVAL GROUPS IS, al-Qaida reach accord in Syria, sources say The Associated Press NEW YORK The price of oil took another sharp tumble Thursday as it appeared increasingly unlikely that OPEC members will cut production to staunch a plunge in prices that is en- tering its fifth month. The lower prices are squeezing the revenue and profit of oil companies, but are expected to give a lift to the U.S. economy because airlines, shippers, and con- sumers are paying much less for fuel. "Gasoline is an input to almost everything that is made in this economy," said Michael Noel, an economist at Texas Tech University. Benchmark U.S. crude fell $2.97, or 4 percent, to close at $74.21 Thursday af- ternoon. It is down 31 per- cent since late June to its lowest level since Septem- ber of 2010. Brent crude, a bench- mark for international crudes that is closely corre- lated with the price of gaso- line in the U.S., fell $2.46 to close at $77.92, also its low- est level in four years. 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