Rosetta Comet-Chasing Probe Wakes Up

[Jazzy]

The Rosetta spacecraft has beamed a signal back to Earth, ending nearly three years of deep-space hibernation.

The spaceship was sent into a slumber in 2011 to conserve energy before it embarked on one of the most technologically advanced missions ever attempted - landing on a comet at 24,600mph.

Rosetta's internal alarm clock gave the wake-up call at 1000 GMT, but it took some eight hours for mission control to get confirmation it worked, scientists said.

The European Space Agency (ESA) received the all-clear message "Hello World" from the probe, which is some 500 million miles (800 million kilometres) away from Earth.

A webcast showed jubilant scientists at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, as the signal came in.

"It was a fairy-tale ending to a tense chapter," ESA said in a press release.

If all goes to plan the probe will rendezvous with the comet in the coming months and drop its Philae lander docks onto its icy surface in November - a move that has never been attempted before.

The 2.5-mile-wide comet has almost no gravity, so the probe will have to use harpoons and ice anchors to clamp on to the surface.

The spacecraft was launched in 2004 on a trek of seven billion kilometres (4.3 billion miles) around the inner Solar System.

Comets are clusters of ice and dust which are believed to be remnants from the very birth of our star system.

Analysing the comet should unlock secrets of how the Solar System formed and possibly how life on Earth began.

Source

I find this fascinating.

 

[Nebulous]

I find this fascinating.

Me too, thanks for sharing!

 

[Evil Eye]

I seem to remember this one starting off

Anyway, cool. They even found a situation where "Hello World" is vaguely entertaining.