“I’m a little tired, have you caught all my data? It may take me a nap … “
Philae and announced yesterday, via Twitter, that as pointed forecasts of scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA), batteries were already on its last legs .
After seven hours of decline and after 10 years of travel aboard the Rosetta spacecraft, the Philae module became on Wednesday the first human artifact getting land on a comet. Europe was history and so was getting an unprecedented success.
However, not everything went as planned which already has become the flagship mission of the ESA, since a failure harpoons made Philae landed at a point other than initially expected, with much less light, so they were unable to charge their batteries.
have landed Agilkia the point that scientists had indicated as appropriate, Philae had received seven hours of sunlight, facing insufficient hour and a half to reach her in the place where he finally settled.
In the hope that he could receive more light and well upload your exhausted batteries, the agency made last night a maneuver “lift and turn” your landing gear to module could get better access to sunlight. “It looks like a completely different kite from this angle!” Tweeted yesterday Philae having successfully rotated 35 degrees.
Once that is done, and before they finally enter into hibernation to 1.36 hours , Philae got another of its goals: to activate the rest of their instruments and send valuable data that will be analyzed by experts from ESA.
The robot was able to launch its chemical spectrometer and drill the comet’s surface. This way, you can determine things such as the density of the comet, its temperature or soil composition.
“This machine works great in difficult conditions and we can be extremely proud of the amazing scientific success Philae represented “declared last night from the operations control room at ESA Darmastadt (Germany) Stephan Ulamec responsible touchdown.
Because despite this” blackout “, the mission does not end here, because Philae landing was only a part of this great project. The Rosetta probe will follow the comet in its journey towards the sun and observe how it reacts to heat.
Along the way, Philae continue in “sleep mode” on 67P / Churyumov Gerasimenko. However, although this possibility can not be assured, is not excluded 100% that Philae awake again , as there is still the hope that its batteries can be charged as the comet will receive more light on its progress toward the sun.
“You have done a great job Philae, has achieved something that no spacecraft had done before.” So goodbye last night, also via Twitter- the Rosetta mission of this robot that has made history, minutes before he exhausted his energy.
As of now, Rosetta will continue its mission, which is scheduled to December 2015 and has cost 1,300 million euros to find out more about the solar system formed 4,600 million years ago.
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