BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Philae woke up and contacted Earth!

Rosetta's little lander, lost on Comet C-G last year, has contacted Earth through Rosetta. Everyone had been hoping that with the comet getting closer to the Sun, there would be enough sunlight to recharge Philae's batteries.

They must be breaking out the bubbly at ESA, though obviously, no one knows if Philae is in a position (literally and figuratively speaking) to continue her mission.

Philae wakes up!

The Rosetta spacecraft is now in a changed orbit, one designed to make it easier to receive communications from Philae. Two data packets came through last weekend, one on Saturday and a briefer one on Sunday. Everyone's hoping for more now.

Yay! Another communication from Philae-on-the-comet. Rosetta transmitted a pair of signals from Philae that arrived in Darmstadt (Germany) this afternoon Central European Time. Meanwhile the Rosetta mission team has sent new commands to Rosetta to further adjust her orbit and distance in order to improve radio visibility between Rosetta and Philae.

It was quite sad when Philae went silent back in November and nobody knew where he was. The hope then was that the little lander would get enough light to recharge the batteries when Comet C-G got closer to the Sun. So people in the mission team – and around the world – are pretty excited that contact is now being made. I guess this means they'll also be able to work out Philae's position.

Since Philae communicated on June 13, there have been seven more periods of communication. The most recent was two days ago. However so far they haven't had a stable link. When the link is intermittent, there is a delay in getting through the set up and commands and only limited amounts of data can be sent.

ESA people are still working on Rosetta's trajectory to get a stable link. It's difficult to get Philae and Rosetta coordinated. Philae isn't always in sunlight – so doesn't have enough power for communications – when Rosetta is in a position for contact to occur.

Yay Philae! On Thursday night the Philae lander communicated with Rosetta and sent the data from an experiment. There hadn't been a communication from the lander since June 24th, so this was quite heartening. In addition, the lander was responding to orders from the ground team, and the connection was stable for 12 minutes. I know that doesn't sound like much, but this is a big improvement over the original transmissions.