European comet spacecraft finds missing Philae probe

By Hajer M’tiri

PARIS

A robotic space probe which went missing for a year after landing on a fast-moving comet was found again, the European Space Agency (ESA) revealed on Monday.

The Rosetta spacecraft succeeded in making contact with the Philae lander after detecting it with a high-resolution camera.

Philae was wedged into a dark crack on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, according to an ESA statement.

The discovery comes less than a month before Rosetta itself descends to the comet’s surface in a final, one-way trip.

“This remarkable discovery comes at the end of a long, painstaking search,” said Patrick Martin, ESA’s Rosetta Mission Manager. “We were beginning to think that Philae would remain lost forever. It is incredible we have captured this at the final hour.”

The last time the Rosetta team -- consisting of members from the European Space Agency and NASA -- was able to establish communications with Philae was July 9, 2015, even though numerous attempts at contact were made over the past 12 months.

By the end of September, scientists will no longer be able to contact Rosetta or Philae. Both devices are solar-powered and will lose energy as the comet moves away from the Sun.

The Rosetta probe was launched March 2, 2004, from Kourou in French Guiana and has covered a distance of approximately 3.7 billion miles (six billion kilometers).

It chased 67P around the solar system before finally reaching the giant lump of ice and dust on Aug. 6, 2014.

It was named after the Rosetta stone, an Egyptian historic monument engraved in three languages, and its probe is named after Philae, an island in Lake Nasser, Egypt.

Rosetta was the first spacecraft to rendezvous with and orbit a comet, and has already returned critical scientific data.