According
to the ESA (European Space Agency) blog
at 22:28 CEST (10:28 pm, 1:28 pm PDT) they received a tweet from
Philae lander. The tweet was a short 6 word message to let them know
that after an almost 8 month hibernation its batteries finally
charged up enough for it to wake up. The tweet read: "Hello
Earth! Can you hear me?"
Philae
is doing very well: It has an operating temperature of -35ºC and
has 24 Watts available," explains DLR Philae Project Manager Dr.
Stephan Ulamec. "The lander is ready for operations."
The
Philae lander made news in mid November last year when it became the
first
man-made object to land on a comet. Philae's landing on comet
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko did not go exactly the way it planned out
though. The lander bounced twice before finally settling down off us
it mark and under a ledge to blocked the solar rays needed to
recharge the batteries. The lander was still able to collect some
data and transmit back to the Rosetta orbiter before going dark.
“We're
really excited to have the mission back in one piece, at least for a
few months,” Mark McCaughrean, senior science advisor at the
agency, said in an interview.
The
ESA never gave up hope that their lander would be able to eventually
wake up and carry on with its mission. In February they announced
that their calculations showed that the Plilae
lander should be able to come out of hibernation sometime between
mid May and mid June. The calculations provided to be spot on when
they received that tweet from the lander.
Other
articles on this topic:
No comments:
Post a Comment