Paris. After a lethargy that was unknown if he would wake up, the robot Philae Saturday night gave signals have been reactivated seven months after landing on a comet send valuable scientific data back to Earth.
Although he had confidence in the scientific community that Philae out of hibernation, the news was greeted with great joy and as a milestone over the historic journey of the module, . the first human instrument that manages to land on a comet
The European Space Agency (ESA, its acronym in English) announced mood in the wake of Philae Twitter: “Hello, Earth. Can you hear me? How long have I been asleep? “.
The answer is almost seven months since the November 15, 2014, after 57 hours of activity, its batteries ran out of power due to lack of contact with the Sun after landing on Comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko, bounce twice and end up perched in a dark area.
It has been precisely the growing exposure of the device to sunlight that has enabled its wake, though it was not until August 16 when the comet reaches its closer and go to 186 million kilometers.
The Rosetta probe, which orbits the comet, had to travel for 20 years to more than 510 million kilometers from Earth in order to place the robot in the comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
The ESA spokesman in Spain, Emmet Fletcher, said Philae has already sent to the headquarters of the mission Darmstadt (Germany) a total of 300 packets or data groups, although there could be up to 8,000 waiting in memory.
“This means that it has 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 it remains to be seen with the analysis made of the same.
Philae needed at least 19 watts to meet 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 Now would be -35 degrees).
Scheduled
In anticipation of this day eventually came last March 12 had rekindled the communication unit of the Rosetta probe to capture any possible transmission of Philae, as has finally happened.
The desired contact occurred at 22.28 local time (20.28 GMT) on Saturday, for 85 seconds, although there were only 40 seconds of data, according to the president of the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), Jean-Yves Le Gall told French radio station RTL.
said “Good news came in the middle of the night, when Philae answered our calls. We had about two minutes link between Rosetta and Philae, and 40 seconds of data. Now we have to analyze all this, but Philae lives, “said Le Gall.
” I’m not surprised what happened, but it’s exciting to have someone call suddenly at night and say ‘we have a signal Philae ‘after a wait of several months, “said Stephan Ulamec, project manager for the German Aerospace Center (DLR, its acronym in German). “We are happy”.
The short burst of communication of the probe containing 300 packets of data was transmitted to Earth by the mothership Rosetta orbits the comet.
“Only We receive information for about 85 seconds. Only records maintenance and probe systems “Ulamec said.
That transmission was enough for scientists knew that Philae is well and has begun to capture enough sunlight to maintain communications.
Ulamec said the probe apparently had been awake several days until contacted Earth because some of the information they received packages containing historical records scientists.
The experts shall Now to change the orbit of Rosetta to give you more time communicating with Philae and can send orders to execute new readings, resulting in new scientific information.
In the comet
In May last year began the approach to the comet and the August 6 meeting occurred. At that time, the probe, which had traveled more than 6,000 million km, was at a distance of about 100 kilometers of the comet and traveling at a speed of 775 meters per second.
In detail
Launch. Launched on March 2, 2004 from the European base at Kourou (French Guiana), the Rosetta probe is named after the stone that unlocked language Egyptian hieroglyph.
Achievement. The Science magazine chose the mission as a scientific achievement of 2014 and in recent months have been published and finding data.
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