PARIS: Europe’s robot lab Philae has made followup contact with Earth more than a day after sending home its first message in nearly seven months since landing on a comet, its ground operators said today.
The lander reestablished contact today morning GMT, and is now “completely awake”, Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of the French CNES space agency told television station France 2.
After a long hibernation with its batteries run down, Philae sent home its first message on Saturday night after a crucial solar recharge.
It landed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on November 12 after an epic 10-year trek piggybacking on its mothership Rosetta.
But instead of harpooning itself onto the iceball’s surface, the lander bounced several times before settling at an angle in a dark ditch.
It had enough stored battery power for about 60 hours of experiments, enabling it to send home reams of data before going into standby mode.
The hope was that better light as the comet approaches the Sun would recharge Philae’s batteries enough for it to reboot, then make contact, and ultimately carry out a new series of experiments.
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