Philae made history by landing on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in November 2014, and it collected data used to analyze the surface of a comet for the first time, but time may be running out for the European probe, ESA officials warned on Friday.
Philae, which was transported to the comet by the Rosetta spacecraft, is resting on the surface of Comet 67P as it moves further and further away from the sun. As a result, temperatures on the comet’s surface are falling drastically. Conditions will be too harsh for the lander to function properly by the end of the month, officials at the space agency explained.
The Philae team plans to make one last-ditch attempt to communicate with the probe on Sunday. They will send a command to the lander through Rosetta in an effort to activate Philae’s momentum wheel. If successful, they hope that this will enable them to change Philae’s position and collect more solar energy.
“Time is running out, so we want to explore all possibilities,” explained Stephan Ulamec, Philae lander manager at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). He and his colleagues believe they may be able to clear off accumulated dust from the spacecraft’s solar panels using this command, and maneuver it into better alignment with the sun, thus possibly extending its lifespan.
There is ‘a small chance’ that the lander will wake up
However, there is every possibility that the command will fail and that there will be no response from Philae, the ESA cautioned. The status of the lander is unknown, as it last sent an update on its health in July 2015, but DLR scientists believe that at least one of the its transmitters and one of its receivers have failed, and the second transmitter is not at 100 percent either.
Ulamec and his colleagues hope that Philae has not fallen over or become covered with dust over the past few months. By the end of January, Comet 67P will be more than 300 million kilometers away from the sun, which will drop the surface temperature to below -51ºC and end the lander’s operation.
This command is essentially ESA’s “Hail Mary” play – a last ditch effort to try to elicit a response from the lander. Philae operations manager Cinzia Fantinati said that there is “a small chance” of success and that they want to “leave no stone unturned,” but Ulamec is less optimistic, noting that the silence “does not bode well” for Philae.
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Image credit: ESA
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