Solar panels as landing legs?

[Sputnik 1]

After getting a probe around Eve I realized that I had way too much fuel left, so I decided to get into orbit around it's moon Gilly. Even after achieving orbit I still had a ton of fuel to spare, so I had an idea, time to land on Gilly! Note: This probe was never meant to land on something and had no landing legs or gears. So after doing a few burns I was in a suborbital trajectory. Using my nuclear engine I managed to slow the probe down and land. But what did I use to land?

 The solar panels of course! Thanks to Gilly's low gravity and the power of SAS I managed to balance the ship on it's panels and return to orbit around Eve. Looks like Jeb has some competition when it comes to landing skills 

Also I decoupled the nuclear engine and fuel tank before landing to reduce weight.

[Evanitis]

Nice! Make sure to try cartwheeling too.

[Fearless Son]

The only other time I have seen someone do that successfully is @Cupcake... with an ultra-light ion lander, but even then it was with retracted Gigantor XL panels.  

That must have been hair-raising to do.  

[Randox]

And yet I lose my solar panels when errant Kerbals fly into them 

 

I don't think this kind of landing is for me. I seem to recall in the not too distant past landing an admittedly large lander on minmus and breaking one of the industrial landing gear (permanently compressed).

[Findthepin1]

Too large a risk for me. I try very hard not to send anything with retractable solar panels because they're so easily breakable and you can't fix them.

[katateochi]

I think you may have just voided your warranty on those panels!

Edited February 11, 2016 by katateochi

[AlextheBodacious]

I... wow. But tip: You don't need more than 2 solar panels per stage, and you could've landed on your engine if you wanted to.

[Gargamel]

I seem to remember a Manley video a while back that did the same thing, I think in honor of the NASA (ESA?) probe that landed on the asteroid that wasn't supposed to. 

[Snark]

23 hours ago, AlextheBodacious said:

I... wow. But tip: You don't need more than 2 solar panels per stage, and you could've landed on your engine if you wanted to.

On Gilly?  Could have landed on anything.  (Even solar panels, thus the post...)

Gilly's gravity is so light that you don't "land" on it, so much as dock with it.

[AlextheBodacious]

14 minutes ago, Snark said:

Gilly's gravity is so light that you don't "land" on it, so much as dock with it.

I know, I've been... but then again all my experience with solar panels is them breaking unbelievably easily.