Philae Fails to Pick Up ESA's Last Call
The first comet lander ever is about to go dark forever.
The European Space Agency's comet lander Philae was, in some ways, doomed from the start. It tumbled off of its intended landing site, falling instead into a dark, poorly lit valley. The solar powered probe returned some information from the surface before going quiet. It woke up once more roughly long enough to say "hello," but not long enough to return much data before going quiet again.
ESA tried to reach out one last time yesterday to Comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko this week as Comet 67P makes its way to the outer solar system again. But Philae didn't pick up the call, likely never receiving the last ditch message.
"At some point we have to accept we will not get signals from Philae anymore," Philae program manager Stephan Ulamec told New Scientist.
Philae's parent craft, Rosetta, will be retired in September, put through a controlled "crash" onto the surface that ESA engineers hope will be soft enough to let the orbiter wake up again when Comet 67P comes through the inner solar system in a few year's time. The comet has a 6.5 year orbit that takes it between the orbit of Mars and Earth at periapsis and out past the orbit of Jupiter at apoapsis.
Source: New Scientist
