Paris, France- The European robot Philae, perched on the comet Churyumov since last November, woke up on Saturday night, which gives hope that soon again be fully operational .
“Philae is alive!” he enthused Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), the space agency French.
“We were able to recover his signs it for two minutes and 40 seconds of data,” he said. “Philae is going to start again.”
“Hello, Earth! You hear me?” Tweeted the robot through its own, encouraged by the European Space Agency (ESA) .
“The lander is ready to resume operations,” said Stefan Ulamec, head of the robot, in a statement from the German space agency DLR.
The long-awaited news was hailed by the aerospace world, now passionately he followed the tribulations of the robot last winter. “TheNASA says good morning to Philae,” tweeted the US space agency. “Everyone celebrates the awakening of @ Philae2014″ he added.
After traveling ten years in company Rosetta and have traveled more than 6,000 kilometers, Philae achieved a historic first to land on the comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko in November.
However, the landing of the robot, which weighs 100 kilos on Earth but is light as a feather on the comet was quite hectic.
The robot bounced several times before settling between cliffs in a dimly lit room, so that solar panels whose energy is supplied not receiving enough light. November 15, Philae fell into a long slumber, but not before operate for about 60 hours.
‘Philae going well’
recent days, the comet, Rosetta escort, has been approaching the sun, leading to a higher temperature and luminosity, which enabled the awakening of Philae.
This robot-lab, which is mission taking pictures and collecting data on the comet, woke up on Saturday at 22H28, European time (20h28 GMT), said the ESA.
“We were surprised it happened at night, even if we had hoped for several months, “he told AFP Patrick Martin, head of the Rosetta mission. On May 30, had begun a new campaign to try to get into contact with the robot.
The two minutes of communication between Philae and probe have “enough to confirm that this is well and that their systems work effectively in terms of energy and temperature to continue communicating “with Rosetta, Martin said.
The robot is equipped with a switch that does not turn on until the internal temperature reaches -45 degrees apparatus Celsius while to come into contact with the probe and receive your orders requires 12 watts, and 19 for sending data.
“Philae is great. It is at an operating temperature of -35 degrees Celsius and has 24 watts of power, “said Ulamec.
At the moment, the ESA has yet to determine the exact position of Philae and known by a margin of error of about 50 meters.
After sending the first data on Saturday night, scientists will begin to decrypt and analyze, a task that could take hours or even days.
The data packets stored in the Memory robot scientists provide information about what happened in recent days, as the robot could not contact Rosetta until Saturday.
MISSION
The Rosetta mission, which spent 20 years under way, aims to understand the evolution of the solar system from birth. Comets, in fact, are considered vestiges of primitive matter.
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