After Four Days, Philae Team Gets to Rest

Posted by timothy on Sunday November 16, 2014 @07:43AM from the beating-god-by-three-full-days dept.

The Associated Press reports on one happy consequence of the inevitable shutdown of the Philae lander, after its incredible landing on Rosetta: the team that was in control of the lander here on earth finally gets to take a well-deserved break, after four nearly sleepless days and nights. It seems unlikely -- though it's not impossible -- that Philae will get enough solar energy to briefly wake up again; its bouncy landing and harpoon malfunction mean that the craft is in shadow rather than the sunlight that it was hoped to bask in. From CNN: Originally, it was supposed to have seven hours of light per comet day -- which lasts just 12.4 hours. Now it is exposed only 1.5 hours a day. That's likely not enough to juice up Philae's rechargeable secondary battery, ESA said. There is one last hope. "Mission controllers sent commands to rotate the lander's main body, to which the solar panels are fixed," ESA says in on its blog. "This may have exposed more panel area to sunlight."

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Re:Questions for any who have been following this by duck_rifted · 2014-11-16 08:19 · Score: 5, Informative

First things first.

We've been calling this comet "Rosetta" thanks to the media, but it's actual name is 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Rosetta is the name of a probe that photographed it. But it does have a certain ring to it that may better stick in the minds of your average news reader.

The comet has a rotation period of about twelve and a half hours. Its orbit lasts 2,398 days. We may be calling that a "Rosetta year" soon. To actually calculate whether the comet's orientation will allow sunlight to strike the main panels for longer stretches, we'd need to know more about the cliff it's under. The ESA is no doubt crunching those numbers now, but it's possible that if this situation will resolve itself then it will take years.

A smaller panel got sunlight when the drill was used to rotate the probe. So, if it is powered down and we wait, it should eventually charge back up. Each time that happens, the ESA can work at getting it into a better position, little by little.

It's not dead; it's just napping. It will eventually be back online. The big question is, when? If the ESA knew for sure, they'd probable tell us. So, we wait.