Pretty sure having working landing gear would have solved the problem
These are all Monday morning quarterbacking, but truth is that all of us should learn from the unfortunate design mistakes that ESA has made
Working landing gear is one, but a bigger design flaw is that they (the ESA probe landing team) assumed that they could land the probe on a comet just like they land a probe the size of the Moon or Mars
All they have, before they release the probe, was a series of GO / NO GO checklist, on the few chosen "preferred landing spot" on that comet
There was no contigensy plan for the many "what ifs" that may happen
And the design of their probe (the shape of it) is exactly like the probe others have used on Mars / Moon - a box with a few legs beneath it
Instead of design the probe with a shape that could deal with more "what if" scenario --- that might greatly enhance the survival of the probe if the probe ended up in non-optimal spots
And the power supply --- why send up a thing to a piece of flying rock in space, chase it for 10 long years, and by the time the space craft reaches the destination, it only has hours of power supply left??
The ESA Rosetta mission turns out to be a showcase of a series of what _not_ to do if one wants to launch a space probe to space
C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas l'Informatique. -- Bosquet [on seeing the IBM 4341]