European Space Agency cuts radio link to comet lander

Ground controllers bid a final farewell today to robot lab Philae, cutting communications after a year-long silence with the tiny probe hurtling through space on the surface of a comet. All three landing sites (Philae initial and final sites and the planned resting place of the Rosetta orbiter) are located on the northern part of the “head” of the comet.

On Wednesday, the European Space Agency will switch off the Electrical Support System Processor Unit (ESS) on the Rosetta spacecraft, severing all contact with the lander that has been incommunicado for over a year now.

But, Martin added that the mission of Philae and Rosetta will always be remembered as an incredible success.

“We found that the comet wasn’t as rich in ice as we thought it would be”, Essam Heggy, a co-investigator for the CONSERT instrument for the Rosetta Mission, says in the video.

The little box-shaped craft landed on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after a 10-year journey and became the first man-made object to orbit and then settle on a comet.

A picture of the Philae lander, taken by Rosetta, as the spacecraft descended to the surface of Comet 67P. The lander provided valuable data during the 57 hours it operated on battery power, but entered a hibernation period shortly after, waking only once for a brief period in July 2015. The last time researchers received data from Philae was back in summer of 2015, when Rosetta picked up a few sporadic signals from the lander. Scientists worked frantically with the bot’s reserve battery power, doing improvised science experiments to glean as much data as possible from a lander whose exact whereabouts remained unknown.

“For Philae, this means that, although ice-free, it is probably covered with dust in its shaded location on the comet and will go into permanent hibernation – no longer able to activate its systems in its cold environment”, Stephan Ulamec, Philae project manager at the German Aerospace Center, said in a statement. The Philae lander was provided by a consortium headed by the DLR.

Engineers had left the ESS in the hope that communications would be re-established and we would hear from Philae once again.

But the reason for turning it off now is due to Rosetta’s own impending end of mission, coming on September 30, 2016 when it will make a controlled impact at the Ma’at region on the comet’s “head”.

“Everyone involved will be extremely sad, of course, but equally enormously proud of what has been achieved by this unique space mission”.

A robot has reached the end of its life and is bidding farewell through a series of tweets.

“Comets are the most primitive bodies in the solar system”.