Rip Van Philae wakes up!

Holy flyin’ toasters, the European Space Agency’s Philae has awakened from its seven-month sleep on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Even better, it’s sending telemetry data back to Earth!

When we last heard from Philae the lander’s batteries had given out and it was shutting down in November, 2014. Its landing was not in a nice smooth sunlit crater but rather on an obstruction of some sort which caused it to bounce several kilometers away from its intended resting place. It ended up against a cliff which shaded the solar panels which were meant to provide it with power.

In March ESA activated the communication unit on Rosetta, the space probe which carried Philae to the surface of the comet, hoping it might hear from Philae. Nobody’s yet admitting they felt it was unlikely they ever would.

When analysing the status data it became clear that Philae also must have been awake earlier: “We have also received historical data – so far, however, the lander had not been able to contact us earlier.”

Now the scientists are waiting for the next contact. There are still more than 8000 data packets in Philae’s mass memory which will give the DLR team information on what happened to the lander in the past few days on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Philae shut down on 15 November 2014 at 1:15 CET after being in operation on the comet for about 60 hours.

The reason it was able to come back to life seems to be that the comet has gotten much closer to the sun (relatively; it’s now 132 million miles away from the sun and 188 million miles away from Earth and getting closer by the second). Because of that, the solar panels can collect enough sunlight to recharge the lander’s batteries. If it continues to send data, this will be the first opportunity science has had to actually observe the formation of a comet’s tail.

This is so cool!