Rosetta’s lander Philae has woken up after seven months in hibernation
on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
The signals were received at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in
Darmstadt at 22:28 CEST on 13 June. More than 300 data packets have been
analysed by the teams at the Lander Control Center at the German Aerospace
Center (DLR).
“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.”
For 85 seconds Philae “spoke” with its team on ground, via Rosetta, in
the first contact since going into hibernation in November.
When analysing the status data it became clear that Philae also must have
been awake earlier: “We have also received historical data – so far, however,
the lander had not been able to contact us earlier.”
Now the scientists are waiting for the next contact. There are still more
than 8000 data packets in Philae’s mass memory which will give the DLR
team information on what happened to the lander in the past few days on
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Philae shut down on 15 November 2014 at 1:15 CET after being in operation
on the comet for about 60 hours. Since 12 March 2015 the communication
unit on orbiter Rosetta was turned on to listen out for the lander.
