Philae, the small probe that our species successfully landed on a comet (Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko), has reawakened after its batteries died not long after the first landing in November. The BBC reports:
The European Space Agency (Esa) says its comet lander, Philae, has woken up and contacted Earth.
Philae, the first spacecraft to land on a comet, was dropped on to the surface of Comet 67P by its mothership, Rosetta, last November.
It worked for 60 hours before its solar-powered battery ran flat.
The comet has since moved nearer to the sun and Philae has enough power to work again, says the BBC’s science correspondent Jonathan Amos.
An account linked to the probe tweeted the message, “Hello Earth! Can you hear me?”
On its blog, Esa said Philae had contacted Earth, via Rosetta, for 85 seconds in the first contact since going into hibernation in November.
The awakening, which was hoped for, wasn’t at all certain. It was activated by the sun falling on solar panels, but scientists didn’t know if the probe would have been irreparably damaged in the past seven months by low temperatures. And there’s science to be done:
One ambition not fulfilled before the robot went to sleep was to try to drill into the comet, to examine its chemical make-up. This will become a priority,
Philae is designed to analyse ice and rock on the comet.
The Rosetta probe took 10 years to reach the comet, and the lander – about the size of a washing-machine – bounced at least a kilometre when it touched down.
Before it lost power, Philae sent images of its surroundings which showed it was in a type of ditch with high walls blocking sunlight from its solar panels.
Its exact location on the comet has since been a mystery.
I still consider this one of the greatest of all human achievements: the probe was launched in 2004 and was more than ten years in space before landing on a comet only a bit more than 4 km across! Here’s a video describing the mission before the successful landing—and it features the Official Website Astronaut™.
Speaking of Astro Sam, she’s now in Houston, presumably being debriefed before heading back to Italy (note the teeshirt and the healthy breakfast in this tw**t).
Note too that she’s eating a peach. At least one person has suggested that this is a tribute to T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock“, one of the best poems of our time. “Prufrock” was first published one hundred years ago (Eliot was 27 then, and had been working on the poem since he was 22); and it was suggested that Cristoforetti is an Eliot fan paying homage to the poem, which contains these famous lines:
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Somehow I think this is just a coincidence.
h/t: Matthew Cobb
Fantastic news! Can’t wait to learn more about Philae and the comet.
Here’s a 32 min lecture on the mission with lots of interesting detail (general audience)(from May 15, 2015) (fascinating).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=874&v=0BuotFLgXVY
When I think of all she’s achieved, I think I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
I’ll just grow old and wear my pants rolled.
That is good news, with some nice science to follow hopefully, can’t help but feel good for the Rosetta/Philae team.
Launched in 2004 and hit its moving, 4-km. wide target… THAT’S pretty impressive gunnery! I can’t even imagine the math that went into calculating that shot.
Well done, ESA!!
Wrong mental image. They had, IIRC, nearly 2 dozen orbital correction manoeuvres in their slingshots and the fly out, and more once they’d acquired their target with their long-range cameras.
“Guided missile” is a better image. “Guided hit-ile” even better.
People think it’s astonishing that I can land an oil well through a target box a metre tall and 20m by 10m horizontally, from 3 or 4 km away, through solid rock. Forethought, planning and some moderately complex maths, which I could take you through after I review the code in my well-planning software. It ain’t rocket science, where as the sort of rocket science that the Rosetta team are indulging in actually is rocket science.
To quote “Ignition,” the hilariously entertaining samizdat book on rocket fuels : “M-O-N-O-P-R-O-P-E-L-L-A-N-T … oh, you mean ‘explosive’?”
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guided missile”“guided hit-ile”
Good groaner.
Stolen from somewhere I’ve forgotten.
Ignition… Probably the funniest science-related book ever written!
It is an absolute scream, isn’t it.
Any book which starts by asking the reader to notice the shapes of the distant tree line to verify that two photos were taken from the same view point, despite the landscape rearrangement between the photos has something going for it.
“In search of the mythical monopropellant”. C.L.A.S.S.I.C
Do you read “Things I won’t work with” too?
Derek Lowe certainly has a gift for the colourful phrase!
My favourite (possibly predictably) has to be ‘Sand won’t save you this time’, about that glorious molecule chlorine trifluoride.
From memory … no, it’s worth getting it right …
From “Things I won’t work with“. The whole lot is worth reading (and there are new additions which I am going to print out, for bedtime reading!), but the classic is
I cannot advertise it highly enough – truely warming to the cockles of anyone with memories of dull chemistry lectures.
Yeah, that’s some fancy calculatin’!!
And some people can’t put a Volkswagen in a garage.
Not side wise or upside down, no.
Yes, and I too am very glad to hear this news. Lets dare hope for amino acids and sugars laced with hydrocarbon chains on the comet. But I will take any organic compounds, really.
Oh, it’s dinner time in your time zone too?
Right now it is around noon. But I will nibble on assorted compounds at pretty much any time.
Wooo! Beats thinking about the well. And it’s knocking-off time too. Reports up to date for Mr Night Shift, and I’ll try to get a working connection in the accommodation!
It’s official!
Hmmm, someone set the wake-up code to NOT try to turn on the transmitter too early. Build battery charge, get the heaters going … and only then start to power up. Very canny.
Very canny. [Thinks back to recent “lost data” events at work] It’s almost as if .. .they want to find out what happened and aren’t trying to cover things up with spurious claims about unavoidable design choices. Hmmmm, what a difference.
subito
Sam’s hair has come back to earth;-)
I can’t imagine the feeling of gravity since I’ve never not felt it. I do love her t-shirt though.
Good news on the probe…I thought hope was lost on that one; let’s hope they make some great discoveries.
The biggest concern that I had for the probe was that it would either wake up crippled (too cold), or be ejected from the surface by a gas vent before it woke up properly. The flight crew were exuding a solid confidence that the probe would regain enough power to re-boot at some point, and that was good enough for me.
Maybe AstroSam is an Allman Brothers fan. They had an album titled “Eat A Peach”. I wonder if they were Eliot fans.
How can one follow the next discoveries?
What’s our Astro Sam gonna do when we get to the centenary of The Waste Land — take a picture with the Holy Grail?
One of my favourite bands and one of my favourite authors lead me to look at that phenomenal work.
This is really really really cool.
The only important thing to know about the probe ‘reawakening’ is: What kind of shirt was Matt Taylor wearing? [/losermode]
Maybe someone should warn AstroSam about that shirt she’s wearing. “Gravity gets me down” ? Is that oppressing all us gravitationally subjugated earthlings? How dare she flaunt her recent privileged status. Grovelling apologies are in order, I think.
cr
sub
I imagine one of the most vivid experiences for her is just smelling air with plant smells and other outdoors smells.
That’s what struck my most strongly when I came down from Mt. McKinley (after 3 weeks of nothing but ice and rock). And also each spring as the snow melts and the ground is again uncovered.
Great news about Philae.
And I thought my distributed application was difficult!
Hat tip to all working on this project.