Free Republic

The lander “spoke” with its team on ground via Rosetta for 85 seconds — its first contact since going into hibernation in November. Signals were received at ESA’s European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt at 4:28 p.m. EDT yesterday June 13. The lander sent more than 300 data packets reporting on its condition as well as information about the comet. ... If coming out of hibernation isn’t surprising enough, it appears Philae has been awake for a while because it included historical data along with its current status in those packets. There are still more than 8000 data packets in...

With just 60 hours of battery power, the lander drilled, hammered and gathered science data on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko before going into hibernation. Despite appearances, the comet’s hard as ice. The team responsible for the MUPUS (Multi-Purpose Sensors for Surface and Sub-Surface Science) instrument hammered a probe as hard as they could into 67P’s skin but only dug in a few millimeters: “Although the power of the hammer was gradually increased, we were not able to go deep into the surface,” said Tilman Spohn ... “If we compare the data with laboratory measurements, we think that the probe...