Europe’s robot lab Philae, zipping toward the sun on a comet, has called home for the eighth time since waking up from hibernation last month, French space agency CNES said on Friday.
After 15 days of silence, Philae had a 20-minute conversation with ground control via its transport ship, Rosetta, which is in orbit around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, it said in a statement.
This was “very encouraging news for the remainder of the Philae mission,” the agency said.
Photo: AP
There had been no news from the washing machine-sized robot since June 24, a disquieting break for mission controllers.
Philae first woke up on June 13 after seven months in hibernation on the comet’s surface.
The tiny lander touched down on Nov. 12 last year after a 10-year journey piggybacking on Rosetta.
The landing was bumpy — the tiny lab bounced several times on the craggy surface before ending up deep in the shade, deprived of sunlight to replenish its battery.
Philae had enough onboard power to send home data from about 60 hours of tests conducted with eight of its 10 instruments before going into standby mode on Nov. 15.
However, the lander’s power pack is being recharged as 67P streaks toward the sun at about 31km per second.
Thursday’s eighth contact was the longest yet, with an uninterrupted stretch of 12 minutes, the CNES said, adding that critical data from Philae’s prodding and probing of its alien world was downloaded.
“The link was by far the best yet, with very few interruptions,” the statement said. “It bodes well for the future because such a good connection would allow the teams to take control of Philae and give it commands” — possibly to shift position or start its drill for a subsurface examination.
Comet 67P is approaching perihelion — its closest point to the sun, about 185 million kilometers — on Aug. 13, and scientists are excited about getting a firsthand view of the changes it is expected to go through as it sheds more material.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has
China is mischaracterizing UN Resolution 2758 for its own interests by conflating it with its “one China” principle, US Deputy Assistant Secretary for China and Taiwan Mark Lambert said on Monday. Speaking at a seminar held by the German Marshall Fund, Lambert called for support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the international community at a time when China is increasingly misusing Resolution 2758. The resolution had a clear impact when it changed who occupied the China seat at the UN, Lambert said. “Today, however, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] increasingly mischaracterizes and misuses Resolution 2758 to serve its own interests,” Lambert said. “Beijing