European comet probe Philae could soon resume work after seven months in hibernation, delving deeper for existential secrets thought to lie hidden under the surface of its frozen host, controllers said on Monday.
Mission officials are overjoyed that the rugged little lab has survived deep, dark cold perched on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko since landing on Nov. 12 last year.
And now Philae might now get a grandstand view of 67P’s dramatic transformation as it hurtles toward a close encounter with the sun, they said.
On Saturday, Philae called home for the first time since running out of power on Nov. 15 last year, and made contact again for about four minutes on Sunday.
The washing machine-sized lander’s battery is being recharged as the comet streaks toward the sun at about 31km per second, with carrier vessel Rosetta in orbit.
Sunday’s connection was “pretty short and pretty faint,” European Space Agency (ESA) senior science adviser Mark McCaughrean told reporters, but “we got some data down.”
“The last [contact] actually was very short, but ... it was real-time,” ESA director of science and robotic exploration Alvaro Gimenez added. “We see that the system is improving; it is getting the right temperature and it is going to work,” he told journalists at the Paris Air Show.
Once stable communications are established, teams hope to relay commands to resume experiments with 10 onboard instruments.
“This will take a few days, one week, less than one week, to start doing the science,” Gimenez said. “We are now really excited.”
The probe’s touchdown last year was a bumpy one — Philae bounced several times on the craggy surface before landing in a shady spot, deprived of sunlight to replenish its battery.
It had enough onboard power to send home data from about 60 hours of experiments before going into standby mode.
The mishap has yielded an unexpected boon: If Philae had functioned as intended, powered by sunlight at the start of its mission, it would likely have overheated and died by about March.
“We would not be seeing the comet at its most active phase, which we will now,” McCaughrean said.
By Monday, the lander was receiving three hours of sunlight per comet day, according to the German Aerospace Center.
Comets are thought to be balls of dust, ice and gas left over from the solar system’s formation about 4.6 billion years ago.
Researchers are eager to probe the wake of gas and ice particles 67P is blasting out, the material on its surface and, crucially, what is inside.
Their findings could help answer a fundamental question.
Did comets, slamming into a proto-Earth, bring water and amino acids — the building blocks of life?
“We want to actually drill into the surface and see what it is like, what the material is like locked into the ice there,” McCaughrean said. “That is the material left over from the birth of the solar system, which is the real game here.”
One of Philae’s star instruments is a drill designed to penetrate to a depth of 25cm. However, after landing, the probe perched at a 45-degree angle against a rocky wall and its instrument spun uselessly into space.
“What we hope to look at now is whether we can rotate the body of Philae ... and maybe put the drill into a place where we might be able to then actually go into the surface,” McCaughrean said.
The teams also hope to launch an experiment searching for carbon molecules and to continue measurements of 67P’s internal structure with radio beams bounced between Philae and Rosetta.
Philippe Gaudon, Rosetta project head for the French CNES space agency, said simple tests would start first, “which do not consume a lot of energy,” like testing the comet’s temperature.
“Then will follow the cameras and much later drilling,” he added.
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