Communication with probe on comet to be soon shut off

By Barry Eitel

SAN FRANCISCO (AA) – After more than a year of silence, astronomers announced Tuesday they would soon shut off communication between Earth and the Philae lander, located on the surface of a comet.

The last time the Rosetta team, with members hailing from the European Space Agency and NASA, was able to establish communications with Philae was July 9, 2015, even though numerous attempts have been made over the past 12 months.

Now, the team announced that it will shut off the Electrical Support System Processor Unit (ESS), the system used to communicate with the probe, on July 27.

“'No signal has been received by Rosetta from Philae since last July and earlier this year the lander was considered to be in a state of eternal hibernation,” Rosetta mission spokesperson Claudia Mignone said in a statement Tuesday. “In spite of this, the ESS was kept on until now in the unlikely chance that Philae would re-gain contact.”

The Rosetta spacecraft orbiting the comet, which ferried Philae to its final resting place, has flown within 6 miles (10 kilometers) of the comet’s surface but still failed to pick up a signal from the lander.

The lander sits on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and will be 520 million kilometers (323 million miles) from the sun by the end of the month. Philae will experience a drastic loss of power as its solar panels move further and further away from the sun and is expected to be completely inactive by Sept. 30, when the Rosetta mission officially ends.

When Philae landed on the comet in November 2014, it bounced into a shady spot, an unintended position that deeply affected its ability to communicate with Earth. It made history as the first manmade craft to visit the surface of a comet and sent back extremely valuable information.

At the end of September, the Rosetta craft will crash into the comet after making a series of important observations of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s surface.