Got the info from a Radio that CNES get a 2mn contact with Philae last nigth and 40 second of data.
Please take this info with due precautions waiting for confirmation before opening a new topic.

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/en-direct/a...-spatiales.html

Wow that would be awesome. Got goosebumps

More radios confirm the information. Welcome back Philae

The BBC think it's solid enough to report, so it must be true. (Not much info in that article yet)

It looks that Philae's twitter account is now active.
New message: "Hello Earth! Can you hear me?"

The account tweeted and it's on the blog:



Awesome news.

Philae is up !!!
Amazed and exited.

What an awesome adventure!

at last "my" SD2 will get the opportunity to do something meaningful. way to go!

#Philae is number one trending topic in the UK right now !!

Seams that it was awake since a few days already.

What a comeback! - After other missions hoping for calls that never came....

That's some great news! Hopefully all the instruments are in working order and the battery as well. With an internal temperature at -35°C it also seems like there is quite a reasonable margin from the wake-up limit at -45°C.

The backlog of data packets also gives some confidence that the lander is regularly awake and capable to continue its unique mission. Maybe this will trigger a change in the Rosetta-comet geometry to maximize interaction with Philae?

The BBC put it well - this is one of the most astonishing moments in the history of space exploration. I was not optimistic - so many things could have gone wrong! Looks like we're in for a heck of a ride...

Pretty amazing and great news. Will be interesting to see if the temperature can keep rising above -35C. The sun should have passed the "overhead" point in May, so it's starting to get slightly lower in the south and maybe away from the top panel. Yet it is getting more intense with the approach to perihelion.

This accomplishment is on par with landing Shoemaker on Eros for me.

ESA scientist Mark McCaughrean told the BBC: "It's been a long seven months, and to be quite honest we weren't sure it would happen - there are a lot of very happy people around Europe at the moment."

Quote from the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33126885

Judging from this CNN story, the 24 watts we heard represents a good power margin. "Months after Philae nodded off, lander system engineer Laurence O'Rourke told CNN that Philae needed almost 6 watts of power to reboot itself, 9 watts to accept communications and 19 watts to allow two-way communication with the orbiter."

I would infer it could have rebooted and been receiving commands for a long time.

I don't know what to make of it. an Italian news site (one of the few which is known for fact checking and reliability) is reporting words from one of the engineers responsible for Philae (for SD2, I suppose) that the lander "was not where we were looking for it"

That's supergreat news! 24 W sounds very good. Might even be sufficient to load the battery later, near perihelion.
I hope, the instruments survived the deep temperatures. Can't wait for more data about the health of all systems.

Thanks a lot Climber.
CNES (Marc Pircher, CNES Director at Toulouse Flight Center) added this afternoon that those 1st 40 sec of data was the one that Philae has still in its memory and that was planned to be downloaded.
The downloading will take no less than 10 days to be completed.
Then and only then, they will be able to send commands to Philae for new instructions.
They added that they will try to move it somewhat in order that it is able to sample the surface of 67-P, BUT they will have to be very careful in instructing it to move because in its current position one of its leg is still oriented upwards with no contact on the surface of 67-P and they don't want it to tilt over because this would ruin its mission...

To add to this- tweeted by Francesco Topputo who was involved during the FSS (and possibly beyond, not sure of his position)

"So, it seems now we have a rover on the comet, not a lander."

Maybe referring to the fact that the recent possible image of the lander was outside of the landing ellipse. If that indeed turns out to be Philae.

Oh, yeah, and Woo Hoo!!!

http://www.nature.com/news/philae-comet-la...=TWT_NatureNews


Could it be trapped in some kind of narrow crevasse?
I wonder whether crevasse or crevice is most appropriate? Guess it depends on the ratio of ice/rock!

Yes this is possible, and in the shorter term Rosetta will be pointing more directly at Philae as mentioned near the bottom of the above mentioned Nature story.

More images soon? I like the sound of that.

Fantastic news to wake up to! It should be pretty trivial to nail down a final location, right? (i.e. confirming the object in the images is our trusty friend).

As CNES said today, no taking of new images in the coming days :
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=221280

Yes, I read that. The order and priority of things is what interested me.

Vikingmars, did you perhaps watch the 20:00 TF1 news? Monsieur Le Gall was announced but I can't pick up TF1 to hear what he has to say, so much for my "TripleSat" antenna dish!

Here is a TF1 news story, with a different interview?

http://lci.tf1.fr/science/nouvelles-techno...nt-8621490.html

Thanks for the link to the news item, this is probably what was referred to! Earlier I read the CNES website, where it was mentioned that Mr. le Gall was invited for the TF1 news. I thought that if there was going to be any news about a next contact with Philae, then this would be a good PR moment with the CNES director himself on TV.

I watched TF1 news with Mr Le Gall interview but he said nothing more than what was previously announced on the ESA website.

Great news! What discoveries are yet to come, and will we learn more about Philae's adventures on the surface in these intervening months? Did it get bumped around by an outgassing or some surface rumbling? Did it move from where they thought it was when the batteries ran out to a place that gets more sun light? *gets popcorn ready*

Confidence was expressed by the mission team that it could reboot as it has; I had wondered if it could survive another orbit and get rebooted 6.5 years from now. Chances of that seem very slim based on this from the BBC article:

Very exciting news indeed, and a triumph for the mission engineers.

Remember that despite the initial good news I'm sure that there will be several days (at least) of checkout activity, and Philae is in what is arguably the most dynamic surface environment ever experienced by a lander. Let's root for the team and be grateful for every bit we get.

Wow, this site still exists....and I somehow even remembered my password after I don't know how many years!

Anywhats, I heard a scientist interviewed on the BBC who said the first priority of the mission would be to drill another comet sample and analyze it!?! Is this REALLY the case? Obviously they need to do a lot of work waking individual instruments back up and transferring old accumulated data, but even then is it possible to repeat the sampling experiment at all? I was under the impression that the COSAC instrument exhausted its helium carrier gas for the GS/MS and maybe some other consumables during the first attempt in the initial battery powered 60hr science window. Can anyone inform further?

Only one oven for COSAC was filled (or supposed to be filled) by SD2 as far as I know. Since the system is built for multiple (26) runs I would assume that the helium regulator with its two tanks doesn't just fully open its valve on the first sample and let it run till dry. Even then a drilled sample could still at least be evaluated under the CIVA MI spectroscopic microscope.

Since the SD2 and Ptolemy/COSAC require quite a bit of power drilling won't be on any priority list though.

I think they concluded no solid sample got into the oven, and it was gas that was analyzed.

In fact, nothing new : just PR from Mr Le Gall...
The REAL news about Philae are always coming from CNES' Toulouse Space Center, so stay tuned !

Wonderful news!

I think this is probably one of the most interesting times in planetary exploration with the broadest spectrum of missions occurring. Two dwarf planets with Dawn at Ceres and New Horizons at Pluto, a long term comet orbiter with Rosetta, a resurrected comet lander with Philae, a (possibly) resurrected Venus orbiter with Akatsuki, tons of data streaming back from Mars and Saturn, next year Jupiter. Truly the crème de la crème of engineering feats in recent times.

this morning the CNES director Mr Le Gall reported on France 2 that Philae is fully awake and that a second contact was established, lasting several tens of minutes.

Some planning info that were set up before first contact (in french) : https://rosetta.cnes.fr/fr/le-sonc-prepare-...eveil-de-philae

They plan direct science without using batteries so they'll start with the less power dependent instruments: ROMAP SESAME CIVA & ROLIS.
Plans will certainly change regarding actual situation but I'll bet for pictures been taken pretty soon since knowing Philae environment will considerably help planning.

It looks like MUPUS would be first on the list: https://twitter.com/philae_mupus/status/610356676202491904

http://isee3.p3s.nl/philae/ has started displaying new data. So far, it looks like it's just the Rosetta systems (ESS, MSS) with actual data.
Click to view attachment

COSAC has a very nice gas dosing system and it has not used much of its helium yet. So if there was no major problem during the very cold time on the comet it is likely to work again. With the active comet the COSAC and Ptolemy mass spectra will be a lot of fun to look at.

There is no house keeping data from the instruments yet, so it is a little bit early to speculate which one will be the first to be switched on.

For me the wonder is that Philae survived the 100°C below zero and is still working.

Thanks for the support!

One of the COSAC team.

DLR says that Philae get at least 3 hours of sunlight per comet day instead of 1.3 expected. This is nearly 50% of the possible max instead of 20%, right? Not bad at all on this regard.

Absolutely amazing, Philae jumps out of the shadows and now is a busy bee!

It's not clear exactly what the duration of the second contact was - BBC reports that

But, SD2 wasn't able to sample the surface the first time, correct? IIRC, because of Philae's orientation, it couldn't reach the surface. Is there reason to hope for a different outcome now?

(That said, I'm very pleased to hear Philae's back in action, and hoping for some more images at the very least.)

I am particularly looking forward to the CONSERT data...

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experimentD...id=2004-006C-08

--Bill