Philae wakes up! Europe's plucky comet lander phones home.
Sen鈥擲pace scientists got the news they had desperately been hoping for today when their comet lander finally woke up and phoned home.
The washing-machine sized lander went into hibernation in November, 2014, after it bounced to a shaded spot on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko where it could not get enough sunlight to charge its batteries.
But today the European Space Agency (ESA) revealed the great news that Philae has recharged and contacted Earth via its mothership, the spaceprobe that is orbiting the comet, currently 305 million km (190 million miles) from Earth.
ESA said that signals were received at mission control in Darmstadt at 20.28 UTC on Saturday, June 13. The probe communicated with Earth for 85 seconds, and more than 300 data packets had been analysed by teams at the Lander Control Center at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
Philae Project Manager Dr Stephan Ulamec said: 鈥淧hilae is doing very well: It has an operating temperature of -35潞C and has 24 Watts available. The lander is ready for operations.鈥�
The data showed that Philae had been awake for a while before it was able to link up with Rosetta. Dr Ulamec said: 鈥淲e have also received historical data. The lander had not been able to contact us earlier.鈥�
The team are now waiting to contact Philae again when the probe鈥檚 orientation with Rosetta allows. ESA says there are still more than 8,000 data packets in Philae鈥檚 mass memory which will provide information on what happened to the lander in the past few days.
On hearing news of Philae鈥檚 return to life, Professor Monica Grady, a key member of the Rosetta science team at the UK鈥檚 Open University, tweeted: I鈥檓 in tears again @ESA_Rosetta @Philae_Ptolemy can it be true? #philaewakesup
And delighted Rosetta mission chief scientist Matt Taylor, famous for his body art that includes Rosetta on one leg, told Sen: 鈥淲ell I knew it would come back and this saves me taking a grinder to my tattoo ;) 鈥� He added: 鈥淲e have more fun times ahead trying to get more science out. It鈥檚 early days but things look promising!鈥�
When Philae landed on the comet, its harpoons failed to fire and it spent two hours bouncing before coming to rest. It appeared to be leaning at an angle with just two of its three feet on the surfce, and getting only a fraction of the sunlight its solar panels needed to gain power.
Despite that, the scientists were able to perform all ten main experiments that they had hoped to in the 60 hours before Philae鈥檚 power levels suddenly plunged and it fell silent. The team stressed then that the probe was not dead and that they hoped the probe would wake up when conditions improved.
Since November, the comet has been steadily getting closer to the Sun, meaning the comet has been getting more light and warmth, as demonstrated by the comet鈥檚 increasing activity as it fizzes with jets of gas and dust.
Since March, Rosetta has spent time listening for signals from Philae to show it has come out of hibernation. The best opportunity for this was expected to come from May onwards, and now the misison team鈥檚 faith in this outcome has been vindicated.
Now they hope they will be able to build on what Philae has already discovered, and produce great science from the comet鈥檚 surface as it approaches perihelion, its closest point to the Sun, in August.
Sen reported last week how ESA has on the surface of 67P. But with it transmitting again, they now expect to be able to pinpoint its location exactly.
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