After a lethargy that was unknown if he would wake up, the Philae robot gave Saturday night signals seven months have reactivated after landing on a comet and send valuable scientific Earth information.
The European Space Agency (ESA) announced on Twitter humorous awakening Philae : “Hello, Earth. Can you hear me? How long have I been asleep? “.
The news was received with great joy, because from the November 15, 2014, which landed in the 67P / Churiumov-Gerasimenko, after 57 hours of activity , its batteries ran out of power due to lack of contact with the sun.
The growing exposure of the device to sunlight was what enabled her to wake up, but it was not until August 16 when the comet scope its closer and go to 186 million kilometers.
The probe Rosetta , which orbits the comet, had to travel for 10 years to more than 510 million kilometers Earth to place the robot in the 67P / Churiumov-Gerasimenko.
The ESA spokesman in Spain, Emmet Fletcher explained that Philae has already sent to the headquarters of the mission in Darmstadt, Germany, a total of 300 packets or data groups, although there could be up to 8000 waiting in the memory. “That means he’s been working days before we received the contact,” he said.
Fletcher specified that the data could be on the module batteries, temperature and even data on the comet, although still to be seen with the analysis made of the same.
Philae need at least 19 watts to respond to Rosetta and now has 24 watts, according to ESA, who recalled that it was also imperative that the internal temperature of Philae increase (-45 degrees is the temperature limit to what could be and would now be -35 degrees).
In anticipation of this day eventually came last March 12 had reignited the communication unit of the probe Rosetta to capture any possible transmission of Philae , as has finally happened.
The desired contact took place at 22:28 local time (20:28 GMT) on Saturday, for 85 seconds, although there were only 40 seconds transmission data, according to the president of the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), Jean-Yves Le Gall said the French radio station RTL.
“The good news came in the middle of the night, when Philae responded to our calls. We had about two minutes liaison between Rosetta and Philae , and 40 seconds of data. Now we have to analyze all this, but Philae lives, “said Le Gall.
Scientists begin to decrypt and analyze the data sent, which can take hours or days. ESA also said it could not yet determine the exact position of Philae , but known with a margin of error of 50 meters.
Launched on March 2, 2004 from European basis in Kourou (French Guyana), the probe Rosetta is named after the stone that allowed hieroglyphics to decipher the language of the Egyptians.
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