Comet lander Philae awake, ready for operations: ESA
The Rosetta mission’s lander, Philae, has “woken up” after seven months of hibernation on Comet 67P, the European Space Agency (ESA) says.
“For 85 seconds Philae ‘spoke’ with its team on ground, via Rosetta, in the first contact since going into hibernation in November,” the ESA said via its official blog on Sunday.
The landing probe ran out of power and went into hibernation mode just 60 hours after touching down on the comet because a cliff overhanging its landing site stopped sunlight from reaching its solar cells.
“Now the scientists are waiting for the next contact. There are still more than 8,000 data packets in Philae’s mass memory,” the ESA added.
Philae is designed to analyze rock and ice samples from the comet and has so far been able to send 300 packets of data.
“Philae is doing very well: It has an operating temperature of -35ºC and has 24 Watts available,” said Project Manager Dr Stephan Ulamec. “The lander is ready for operations.”
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is currently around 190 million miles (over 300 million kilometers or nearly 17 light minutes) away from the Earth, the project’s orbiter, Rosetta has been monitoring for signs of life from Philae since March 12.
“It’s all to play for now. We have to try and ascertain its condition in the short term. We have got some good inferences of its health .It’s just woken up so it is not doing any science yet. But if everything goes according to plan we will start looking at doing the operations we were trying to do in November,” said project scientist Dr Matt Taylor.
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