European Space Agency's comet probe wakes up after 7 months
15 Jun 2015
European Space Agency's comet chaser Rosetta's lander Philae has woken up after seven months in hibernation on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
The signals were received at ESA's European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt at 22:28 CEST on 13 June. More than 300 data packets have been analysed by the teams at the Lander Control Center at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
"Philae is doing very well: It has an operating temperature of -35ºC and has 24 Watts available," explains DLR Philae project manager Stephan Ulamec. "The lander is ready for operations."
ESA said Philae "spoke" with its team on ground for 85 seconds, via Rosetta, in the first contact since going into hibernation in November.
The agency said an analysis of the data showed that Philae must have been awake earlier: "We have also received historical data – so far, however, the lander had not been able to contact us earlier."
Now the scientists are waiting for the next contact. There are still more than 8,000 data packets in Philae's mass memory, which will give the DLR team information on what happened to the lander in the past few days on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Philae was shut down on 15 November 2014 at 1:15 CET after being in operation on the comet for about 60 hours. ESA turned on the communication unit on orbiter Rosetta since 12 March 2015 to listen out for the lander ( Rosetta lander touches comet, but glitch hampers anchoring. )
