After 2 weeks of silence, Philae comet lander back in touch

The communications raised hopes that stable links between Philae and Rosetta, and then to ground controllers, would be established in time to allow the lander to provide data as Comet 67P makes its closest approach to the sun on August 12-13.

As the comet came to the sunshine, the lander shocked specialists by getting up and transporting messages to actually Earth on June 13. But this time, Philae communicated again with its orbiting mothership from 17.45 to 18.07 UTC, and also sent some data from the instrument. The acquire hyperlink goes into the researchers tends interwoven directions to really Philae’s equipment and have data back from the originial and material of a given comet.

Scientists from Europe received data from recently revived comet lander Philae on Thursday night, which is an advantage to the team as they attempt to establish a working line of communication for their historic scientific experiments on the surface of the comet. He added: “We never gave up on Philae and remained optimistic”.

The Rosetta orbit, which has been modified to maximize the chances of communications, had not made any changes that could explain Philae’s behavior.

The team had tried to turn on the CONSERT instrument on 5 July but were not sure if they command had been picked up since they didn’t receive any communication from the lander since 24 June. Its internal temperature is thought to be around 0° C now which should be plenty to keep it healthy.

“We can already see that the CONSERT instrument was successfully activated by the command we sent on 9 July”, said Geurts.

However, one thing is certain; Philae has survived the harsh conditions on the comet and is responding to commands from the LCC team. “We do not yet have an explanation for why the lander has communicated now, but not over the past few days”.