ESA's Rosetta Probe Wakes up to Chase Down Comet
Posted on January 21, 2014
.@esa @esascience @esaoperations Hello again! Did it really look like this in mission control earlier? pic.twitter.com/zYvogeVt98
- ESA Rosetta Mission (@ESA_Rosetta) January 20, 2014ESA's Rosetta probe woke up yesterday. The probe was launched in 2014 and has been in deep-space hibernation mode since June 2011. Rosetta will now chase down comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It will become the first space mission to attempt a landing on a comet's surface. The above comic was shared on the ESA Rosettta Twitter, @ESA_Rosetta.
Popular Science reports that their was an initial glitch when Rosetta tried to phone home and scientists had to wait nervously as the system rebooted. Rosetta phoned home at 18:17 UTC on January 20, 2014. The signal was received by both NASA's Goldstone and Canberra ground stations at 18:18 GMT/19:18 CET. Rosetta also tweeted "Hello, world" in many languages on its Twitter account.
Fred Jansen, ESA's Rosetta mission manager, said in a statement, "This was one alarm clock not to hit snooze on, and after a tense day we are absolutely delighted to have our spacecraft awake and back online."
Rosetta will go through a health check to make sure all its systems and instruments are functioning okay. The first images of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko are expected in May. The spacecraft will make its critical rendezvous with the comet in August.