Philae Goodbye! Rosetta cut the cord with his famous robot – Sciences et Avenir

Paris (AFP) – This time it is a “goodbye” official: the European probe Rosetta cut his communications Wednesday with the little robot Philae landed on the comet tchouri to save power and focus on its scientific tasks during the two months left to live.

“Today, communications with Philae were cut,” he told AFP Andreas Schuetz, spokesman for the agency DLR German Space. “This is the end of a fascinating mission successful,” he said.

“It’s time for me to say goodbye,” he told Tuesday night on its Philae Twitter account run by the European Space Agency (ESA).

“We turned off Wednesday antenna aboard Rosetta, which was likely to receive messages of Philae,” said Philippe Gaudon, project manager the Rosetta mission for the French space agency CNES. “We kept listening to this somewhat symbolic.”

But Rosetta, who escort the comet tchouri since August 2014, moves away more and more of the sun. It is currently 520 million kilometers from our star and 590 million kilometers from Earth.

His large solar panels that provide energy, receive less and less light.

the probe loses 4 watts per day, says ESA on his blog.

It is therefore necessary to save the power that Rosetta can continue to operate scientific instruments up at the end of his adventure on 30 September, said Mr. Gaudon.

the goal of the Rosetta mission, launched there over twenty years, is to better understand the evolution of the solar system since birth, comets are considered remnants of primitive matter.

After ten years of traveling as a passenger Rosetta, Philae conducted November 12, 2014 a historic first landing on the nucleus of the comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko. After several rebounds, it stabilized in the shade, lying down.

Equipped with ten instruments, he worked for 60 hours before falling asleep for lack of energy. He woke up in June 2015, but has not been heard from since July 9

-. ‘Send me postcards’ –

In February the teams responsible for the robot had already resolved not to send commands but they stayed to listen as a precaution.

the decision to stop this vigil was taken by Patrick Martin, the head of Rosetta mission at ESA, says the European agency on his blog.

“This is abandoning all hope of receiving something of Philae,” said Mr. Gaudon.

“We had no other choice,” said Mark McCaughrean, chief scientist at ESA.

the popular robot-laboratory, which is followed by more than 447,000 Twitter accounts, is struggling to cut the cord with Earth. He made this appeal: “I am far from Earth and the Sun. I would like to keep memories of YOU with me Please send me postcards #GoodbyePhilae!.!”

<. p> fans of Philae have until August 8 to send a picture of them saying goodbye to the robot, via various social networks or email (GoodbyePhilae@dlr.de) specifies the DLR which will centralize this farewell.

the days of Rosetta are also counted.

on September 30, the probe, which will be located twenty kilometers from the surface, will slow descent of about 12 hours, at a speed of 50 centimeters per second, to a “controlled impact ‘at the surface of tchouri. Upon contact, communications cease, and the operations carried out by Rosetta. This will be the end.

In his last moments of life, Rosetta not be idle. It will take real-time images with very high resolution and will unpublished scientific measurements.

“Everyone involved in the mission will be very sad, of course, but also extremely proud of what has been accomplished “said Mr. McCaughrean

. Source: AFP