Philae Awakes!

[mosaix]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33126885

The European Space Agency (Esa) says its comet lander, Philae, has woken up and contacted Earth.

An account linked to the probe tweeted the message, "Hello Earth! Can you hear me?"

On its blog, Esa said Philae had contacted Earth, via Rosetta, for 85 seconds on Saturday in the first contact since going into hibernation in November.

Great news!!

 

[Ursa major]

Yes: great news!


To misquote that famous (or notorious) headline from 11 April 1992:

It's the Sun What's Done It

​

 

[mosaix]

From the blog:

When analysing the status data it became clear that Philae also must have been awake earlier: "We have also received historical data - so far, however, the lander had not been able to contact us earlier."

I suppose that means that it had enough power to run up some of its instruments but not enough to transmit the collected data or, maybe, Rosetta wasn't in a position to detect the signal.

 

[Ursa major]

Yes, I saw that, particularly:

More than 300 data packets have been analysed and there are a further 8,000 in Philae’s memory, which will give the team information on what happened to the lander in the past few days.

It seems that Philae was in contact with Rosetta for just 85 seconds, but we have to hope that this is a result of Rosetta's "orbit" of the comet.

 

[Vertigo]

Fingers crossed again. They did say they had some hope that this would happen.

 

[crystal haven]

Wonderful news. I got quite excited when I heard about it.

 

[mosaix]

Yes, I saw that, particularly:It seems that Philae was in contact with Rosetta for just 85 seconds, but we have to hope that this is a result of Rosetta's "orbit" of the comet.

I did read somewhere, U.M. that this exactly what they expected to happen. They thought that there would be short periods of contact initially when the lander would get just sufficient sunlight to contact Rosetta but drain its batteries in the process. But as the sunlight increased it would sustain longer and longer communication. Some smart software there, U.M.

 

[Vertigo]

Incredibly smart. They must have anticipated that this sort of problem might arise. All credit to them.

 

[Vertigo]

I missed this bit of news: http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/0...n-with-philae-commands-executed-successfully/

On 9th July Philae communicated again after hearing nothing for a while. It seems she is still operational but the scientists are a little confused as to why the communication is so erratic.

 

[mosaix]

Sadly there has been no further contact since 9th July.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33596274

The Philae comet lander has fallen silent, according to scientists working on the European Rosetta mission.

The fridge-sized spacecraft, which landed on Comet 67P in November, last made contact on 9 July.

But efforts to contact it again since then have failed, scientists have said.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Well, there's always hope...

 

[mosaix]

Well, there's always hope...

No longer, SP.

Ground control bids farewell to Philae comet lander - BBC News

Mission scientists have decided to give up trying to contact the comet lander Philae.

But after a troubled landing and 60 hours of operation, there has largely been radio silence from Philae.

The German Aerospace Center (DLR), which led the consortium behind Philae, said the lander is probably now covered in dust and too cold to function.

"Unfortunately, the probability of Philae re-establishing contact with our team at the DLR Lander Control Center is almost zero, and we will no longer be sending any commands," said Stephan Ulamec, the lander's project manager at DLR.

 

[J Riff]

PCL, call home...

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Still, one of the most amazing space achievements.

 

[Foxbat]

Let's hope it doesn't reappear in the future sometime calling itself Nomad

 

[Droflet]

Yeah, Foxy, a great episode.