Earth cuts link with silent probe
Move comes after year-long silence from pioneer Philae
Earth bid a final farewell to robot lab Philae yesterday, severing communications after a year-long silence from the pioneering probe hurtling through space on a comet.
Writing an extraordinary chapter in space history, the washing machine-sized craft was the first to land on a comet — primeval rubble from the formation of the Solar System.
Philae sent home reams of data garnered from sniffing, tasting and prodding its new alien home hundreds of millions of kilometres from Earth.
Its plucky exploits captured the imagination of children, and many adults, who followed its successes and tribulations via Twitter and an animated cartoon series.
But after more than 12 months without news, it was decided to preserve all remaining energy available to Philae’s orbiting mother ship Rosetta, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced in a blog entitled: “Farewell, silent Philae”.
Rosetta will remain in orbit around comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko for another two months.
It will crash-land on September 30 to join Philae in their final resting place, concluding a historic quest for cometary clues to the origins of life on Earth.
“Today communication with Philae was stopped,” Andreas Schuetz of German space agency DLR told journalists from ground control in Cologne yesterday.
“This is the end of a ... fascinating and successful mission for the public and for science.”