Comet Lander, Philae, Phones Home After Hibernating for 7 Months

Rosetta's famed lander, Philae, has woken up again after seven months in hibernation on the surface of the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This signals the continuation of Philae's mission on this comet.

On June 13, ESA's European Space Operations Center received signals from Philae. More than 300 data packets have been analyzed by the researchers there. For about 85 seconds, Philae "spoke" with its team on the ground in the first contact since it began hibernation in November.

"Philae is doing very well: It has an operating temperature of -35 degrees Celsius and has 24 Watts available," said Stephan Ulamec, Philae Project Manager, in a news release. "The lander is ready for operations."

Now that the first contact has been established, the researchers are waiting for the next content. There are still more than 8,000 data packets in Philae's mass memory, which will tell researchers what happened to the lander in the past few days on the comet.

So far, analyzing the data packets they have received has revealed that Philae must have been awake earlier. However, for some reason it was unable to contact the researchers earlier.

Now, though, scientists are hoping to receive more information from the lander and continue its mission on the comet in order to learn a bit more about it. This may tell researchers a bit more about the history of this particular comet in addition to information about comets in general.

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