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posted by janrinok on Sunday June 14 2015, @02:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the "hello-Earth,-can-you-hear-me?" dept.

According to the BBC the Philae lander has just re-established contact:

Philae was dropped on to the surface of Comet 67P by its mothership, Rosetta, last November.

It worked for 60 hours before going to sleep when its solar-powered battery ran flat.

BBC Science Correspondent Jonathan Amos says the comet has since moved nearer to the sun and Philae has enough power to work again.

The European Space Agency (ESA) space mission to a Comet using the Rosetta spacecraft and it's comet lander Philae has awaken again now that it can absorb more sunlight. The European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany received a signal from Philae lander at 22:28 CEST on 2015-06-13. The status is currently 300 received data packets, operating temperature of -35 °C and 24 watts available. The lander is ready for operations. According to historical data inside the lander, it must have been awake earlier but had not been able to make contact. Another 8000 data packets await in Philae's mass memory which will give information on what happened to the lander in the past few days on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Philae worked for 60 hours the last time but shut down on 2014-11-15 at 01:15 CET because a lack of sunlight to run its electronics.

BBC also reports on this and the lander has supposedly tweeted too.


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  • (Score: 2) by goodie on Sunday June 14 2015, @07:46PM

    by goodie (1877) on Sunday June 14 2015, @07:46PM (#196225) Journal

    My mind is just blown by this. First, seven months ago, now this. Honestly, if I were a very rich visionary in a high-tech company, I'd try my best to grab some of the people who make such resilient marvels of engineering. This is just amazing to me.

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  • (Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday June 14 2015, @09:16PM

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 14 2015, @09:16PM (#196243)

    I'd try my best to grab some of the people who make such resilient marvels of engineering.

    *Honk* It's okay, I'm rich!

    --
    🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by kaszz on Sunday June 14 2015, @09:31PM

    by kaszz (4211) on Sunday June 14 2015, @09:31PM (#196248) Journal

    The problem is often that companies have a management style that turns people in to less than resilient marvels of engineering regardless of where they started.