Rosetta to keep listening for signs of life from comet Lander Philae

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HONG KONG: Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft is trying to contact the Philae landing probe for the first time since the robot fell silent after a bouncy landing on a comet in November.
Although there are slim odds of hearing from Philae in the first communications window this month, scientists remain cautiously optimistic the lander can wake up and resume operating at least some of its scientific instruments as comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko nears the sun later this year.
The first opportunity to contact Philae was Thursday, when ground controllers commanded the probe’s Rosetta mothership to call the lander. The resulting silence was not surprising.
“At the moment, we have not received any signal from Philae yet,” said Koen Geurts, an engineer at the lander’s control center in Cologne, Germany. “It could happen up to the 20th of March, although we’re not expecting too much because the temperatures are still very cold.”
“In case we not receive any signal now, we will retry again in April when chances are higher because the comet will be closer to the sun,” Guerts said in a video updated posted Friday.
Engineers last heard from Philae on Nov. 14, two days after it released from Rosetta and touched down on the comet, then bounced up to a kilometer (0.6 miles) across its nucleus over two hours. Philae ended up on a tilt wedged against a cliff or boulder that eclipses much of the light and heat coming from the sun, and the lander quickly drained its batteries without a way to recharge.
The probe returned images — the first pictures ever taken from the surface of a comet — and collected 16 megabytes of data over the following two days. That was about 90 percent of the data scientists expected to obtain during Philae’s initial operating period, according to Stephan Ulamec, the lander’s manager from the German Aerospace Center, or DLR.
“Philae currently receives about twice as much solar energy as it did in November last year,” Ulamec said in a press release. “It will probably still be too cold for the lander to wake up, but it is worth trying. The prospects will improve with each passing day.”