It was an exciting time for Philae to successfully land on the comet 67P, albeit punctuated by an unfortunate descent. Rosetta mission engineers, however, believe in the possibility that the lander will come back to life as the comet nears the sun.
In a Reddit AMA on Nov. 26, comet engineers and scientists working on the Philae lander and the Rosetta mission at the German Aerospace Center DLR discussed all things about the historic landing, including the promise of the Philae getting back on its feet.
As expected, Redditors poured in with various questions about the mission, including Results_Matter who asked: "How confident are you that you will be able to recharge the batteries and continue the mission? And how long will it be until that is achieved?"
Michael F. A'Hearn, principal investigator for the Deep Impact Mission, answered that the team is not yet sure where Philae is but should it be located where it is believed to be, the change in season in the hemisphere where the lander is should provide it with more sunlight in the next months. Plus the fact that 67P is headed closer to the sun, Philae's batteries should warm up enough to start taking a charge.
"We expect to have enough energy to boot around March next year. Then Philae needs to be heated until we can think of starting to charge the battery. So enough power to run the system, heat it and do charging or other operations we can expect early summer. Once charging can be started, it might take some comet days to charge the battery completely," added Michael Maibaum, deputy operations manager at DLR/Cologne and Philae system engineer.
When asked how long a comet day is, Ivanka Pelivan, ROLIS operations team member at DLR-Pf/Berlin and MUPUS co-investigator, explained that a rotation period takes about 12.4 hours. This means that one comet day is equivalent to half an Earth day.
At the moment, the team still has no idea where on 67P the Philae lander is although they've narrowed down the search area. A combination of the Consert experiment and images taken by the Osiris camera is being used to locate Philae.
Other participants in the Reddit AMA include Claudia Faber, Rosetta SESAME Team, DLR-PF/Berlin; Stubbe Hviid, Osiris camera co-investigator at DLR-PF/Berlin; Horst Uwe Keller, comet scientist (emeritus), IGEP TU Braunschweig and DLR-PF/Berlin; Martin Knapmeyer, SESAME Experiment co-investigator at DLR-PF/Berlin; Ekkehard Kuhrt, Rosetta Science Manager at DLR-PF/Berlin; and Stephan Ulamec, Philae Lander project manager at DLR/Cologne.
