According to a report from the BBC, ground controllers may have put the final nail in the coffin of the comet lander Philae, the main piece of equipment used in the Rosetta mission.
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Scientists say there is “almost zero chance” of hearing from the Philae space probe again after it touched down on a comet more than a year ago.
“Unfortunately, the probability of Philea re-establishing contact with our team…is nearly zero”, Stephan Ulamec, Philea Project Manager from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) said on Friday. But they knew it was unlikely that the commands would even reach the robot, let alone that they would plop it into a spot with enough sunlight to have it sending messages back home.
The WashingtonPost notes that, Conditions on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko have become so cold – falling below minus 180 degrees Celsius (minus 292 Fahrenheit) at night – that the washing-machine-sized probe couldn’t function.
The probe woke up in June as the comet approached the sun, giving scientists hope that the lander could complete some experiments that it had not done before its solar-powered batteries ran out.
Scientists last made contact with the lander on July 9, but efforts since then have failed.
“We still have the receivers on the orbiter on, we did not switch anything off…it’s just to be honest and to be realistic: It’s really not likely that we will hear anything any more”, said Ulamec.
Philae is the lander from the Rosetta spacecraft, which for months now has been orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and listening for signs of activity from its companion craft.
Farewell to little Philae, the intrepid robot that made history by landing on a comet in fall 2014.
The 4-kilometer-wide (2 1/2 mile) “67P” comet is currently some 222 million kilometers (138 million miles) from Earth, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and is now arcing away from the sun.
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The next big event for the space agency’s historic mission to explore a comet will come in late September, when Rosetta will join Philae on the surface after being sent down for a “controlled impact”. The Philae lander was provided by a consortium headed by the DLR.
