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.
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