BBC Online :
The European Space Agency (Esa) says its comet lander, Philae, has woken up and contacted Earth.
Philae, the first spacecraft to land on a comet, was dropped on to the surface of Comet 67P by its mothership, Rosetta, last November.
It worked for 60 hours before its solar-powered battery ran flat. The comet has since moved nearer to the sun and Philae has enough power to work again, says the BBC’s science correspondent Jonathan Amos.
The probe tweeted the message, “Hello Earth! Can you hear me?”
On its blog, Esa said that Philae contacted Earth, via Rosetta, for 85 seconds in the first contact since going into hibernation in November.
“Philae is doing very well. It has an operating temperature of -35C and has 24 watts available,” said Philae project manager Stephan Ulamec.
When Philae first sent back images of its landing location, researchers could see it was in a dark ditch. The Sun was obscured by a high wall, limiting the amount of light that could reach the robot’s solar panels. Scientists knew they only had a limited amount of time – about 60 hours – to gather data before the robot’s battery ran flat.
But the calculations also indicated that Philae’s mission might not be over for good when the juice did eventually run dry. The comet is currently moving in towards the
transmitter have fired up indicate that the engineering has stood up remarkably well to what must have been really quite extreme conditions. Scientists must now hope they can get enough power into Philae to carry out a full range of experiments.
One ambition not fulfilled before the robot went to sleep was to try to drill into the comet, to examine its chemical make-up. This will become a priority.
The European Space Agency (Esa) says its comet lander, Philae, has woken up and contacted Earth.
Philae, the first spacecraft to land on a comet, was dropped on to the surface of Comet 67P by its mothership, Rosetta, last November.
It worked for 60 hours before its solar-powered battery ran flat. The comet has since moved nearer to the sun and Philae has enough power to work again, says the BBC’s science correspondent Jonathan Amos.
The probe tweeted the message, “Hello Earth! Can you hear me?”
On its blog, Esa said that Philae contacted Earth, via Rosetta, for 85 seconds in the first contact since going into hibernation in November.
“Philae is doing very well. It has an operating temperature of -35C and has 24 watts available,” said Philae project manager Stephan Ulamec.
When Philae first sent back images of its landing location, researchers could see it was in a dark ditch. The Sun was obscured by a high wall, limiting the amount of light that could reach the robot’s solar panels. Scientists knew they only had a limited amount of time – about 60 hours – to gather data before the robot’s battery ran flat.
But the calculations also indicated that Philae’s mission might not be over for good when the juice did eventually run dry. The comet is currently moving in towards the
transmitter have fired up indicate that the engineering has stood up remarkably well to what must have been really quite extreme conditions. Scientists must now hope they can get enough power into Philae to carry out a full range of experiments.
One ambition not fulfilled before the robot went to sleep was to try to drill into the comet, to examine its chemical make-up. This will become a priority.
