Philae Comet Lander Has Woken Up After Seven Months

Many of you might recall that quite a few months back the European Space Agency sent a lander on Comet 67-P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko but the mission didn’t really go according to plan. After suffering a rather bumpy landing the Philae comet lander went quiet, went into sleep and that was the end of its communication with the folks back at Earth. Now though seven months after that bumpy landing that caused it to go dark, the Philae comet lander has woken up.

The European Space Agency made contact with the lander late last night which lasted for about two minutes. During this time it was able to receive 300 packets of data which will help better explain what happened during the landing. Data from Philae includes information about samples taken from the comet’s surface after drilling.

ESA had said in November last year that the lander had performed a slight rotation which left hope that it’s solar panels could take in enough light from the Sun for it come back online.

Information from the 300 packets of data revealed that while Philae did come back online it was not able to make contact with the Rosetta host ship. Project Manager Dr. Stephan Ulamec wrote in a blog post that the lander is doing very well and that it’s ready for operations.

The ESA estimates that there are over 8,000 packets of additional data that’s present in Philae’s memory which can’t be retrieved until the next time contact is made. They’ll continue to wait to receive information from the lander which is situated on the comet that’s currently about 127 million miles from the Sun.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Robots
Tags: Space