Philae Wakes Up! Options

[climber]

Got the info from a Radio that CNES get a 2mn contact with Philae last nigth and 40 second of data.
Please take this info with due precautions waiting for confirmation before opening a new topic.

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/en-direct/a...-spatiales.html

[CAP-Team]

Wow that would be awesome. Got goosebumps

[climber]

More radios confirm the information. Welcome back Philae

[JTN]

The BBC think it's solid enough to report, so it must be true. (Not much info in that article yet)

[machi]

It looks that Philae's twitter account is now active.
New message: "Hello Earth! Can you hear me?"

[Habukaz]

The account tweeted and it's on the blog:

"Philae is doing very well: It has an operating temperature of -35ºC and has 24 Watts available," explains DLR Philae Project Manager Dr. Stephan Ulamec. "The lander is ready for operations."

For 85 seconds Philae "spoke" with its team on ground, via Rosetta, in the first contact since going into hibernation in November.

Awesome news.

[doekia]

Philae is up !!!
Amazed and exited.

What an awesome adventure!

[Paolo]

at last "my" SD2 will get the opportunity to do something meaningful. way to go!

[xflare]

#Philae is number one trending topic in the UK right now !!

[climber]

Seams that it was awake since a few days already.

[Mercure]

What a comeback! - After other missions hoping for calls that never came....

[DoF]

That's some great news! Hopefully all the instruments are in working order and the battery as well. With an internal temperature at -35°C it also seems like there is quite a reasonable margin from the wake-up limit at -45°C.

[Harder]

The backlog of data packets also gives some confidence that the lander is regularly awake and capable to continue its unique mission. Maybe this will trigger a change in the Rosetta-comet geometry to maximize interaction with Philae?

[fredk]

The BBC put it well - this is one of the most astonishing moments in the history of space exploration. I was not optimistic - so many things could have gone wrong! Looks like we're in for a heck of a ride...

[scalbers]

Pretty amazing and great news. Will be interesting to see if the temperature can keep rising above -35C. The sun should have passed the "overhead" point in May, so it's starting to get slightly lower in the south and maybe away from the top panel. Yet it is getting more intense with the approach to perihelion.

[0101Morpheus]

This accomplishment is on par with landing Shoemaker on Eros for me.

[Ron Hobbs]

ESA scientist Mark McCaughrean told the BBC: "It's been a long seven months, and to be quite honest we weren't sure it would happen - there are a lot of very happy people around Europe at the moment."

Quote from the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33126885

[scalbers]

Judging from this CNN story, the 24 watts we heard represents a good power margin. "Months after Philae nodded off, lander system engineer Laurence O'Rourke told CNN that Philae needed almost 6 watts of power to reboot itself, 9 watts to accept communications and 19 watts to allow two-way communication with the orbiter."

I would infer it could have rebooted and been receiving commands for a long time.

[Paolo]

I don't know what to make of it. an Italian news site (one of the few which is known for fact checking and reliability) is reporting words from one of the engineers responsible for Philae (for SD2, I suppose) that the lander "was not where we were looking for it"

[Gerald]

That's supergreat news! 24 W sounds very good. Might even be sufficient to load the battery later, near perihelion.
I hope, the instruments survived the deep temperatures. Can't wait for more data about the health of all systems.

[vikingmars]

Got the info from a Radio that CNES get a 2mn contact with Philae last nigth and 40 second of data.
Please take this info with due precautions waiting for confirmation before opening a new topic.
http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/en-direct/a...-spatiales.html

Thanks a lot Climber.
CNES (Marc Pircher, CNES Director at Toulouse Flight Center) added this afternoon that those 1st 40 sec of data was the one that Philae has still in its memory and that was planned to be downloaded.
The downloading will take no less than 10 days to be completed.
Then and only then, they will be able to send commands to Philae for new instructions.
They added that they will try to move it somewhat in order that it is able to sample the surface of 67-P, BUT they will have to be very careful in instructing it to move because in its current position one of its leg is still oriented upwards with no contact on the surface of 67-P and they don't want it to tilt over because this would ruin its mission...

[anticitizen2]

..reporting words from one of the engineers responsible for Philae (for SD2, I suppose) that the lander "was not where we were looking for it"

To add to this- tweeted by Francesco Topputo who was involved during the FSS (and possibly beyond, not sure of his position)

"So, it seems now we have a rover on the comet, not a lander."

[centsworth_II]

...the lander "was not where we were looking for it"

Maybe referring to the fact that the recent possible image of the lander was outside of the landing ellipse. If that indeed turns out to be Philae.

Oh, yeah, and Woo Hoo!!!

[SFJCody]

http://www.nature.com/news/philae-comet-la...=TWT_NatureNews

The lander team are currently trying to understand why the link-up from Philae lasted less time then they would have predicted: from a two hour window, the connection lasted only about 2 minutes. This might be due to uncertainties in Philae’s orientation, or the lander may have moved, says Geurts.

Could it be trapped in some kind of narrow crevasse?
I wonder whether crevasse or crevice is most appropriate? Guess it depends on the ratio of ice/rock!

[scalbers]

The backlog of data packets also gives some confidence that the lander is regularly awake and capable to continue its unique mission. Maybe this will trigger a change in the Rosetta-comet geometry to maximize interaction with Philae?

Yes this is possible, and in the shorter term Rosetta will be pointing more directly at Philae as mentioned near the bottom of the above mentioned Nature story.

[Habukaz]

Assuming the connection with Philae reopens, the first science in coming days will likely be low risk activities, he says, such as taking images and turning on the ROMAP instrument, which measures the comet’s magnetic field.

More images soon? I like the sound of that.

[Explorer1]

Fantastic news to wake up to! It should be pretty trivial to nail down a final location, right? (i.e. confirming the object in the images is our trusty friend).

[vikingmars]

More images soon? I like the sound of that.

As CNES said today, no taking of new images in the coming days :
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=221280

[Habukaz]

Yes, I read that. The order and priority of things is what interested me.

[Harder]

Vikingmars, did you perhaps watch the 20:00 TF1 news? Monsieur Le Gall was announced but I can't pick up TF1 to hear what he has to say, so much for my "TripleSat" antenna dish!

[scalbers]

Here is a TF1 news story, with a different interview?

http://lci.tf1.fr/science/nouvelles-techno...nt-8621490.html

[Harder]

Thanks for the link to the news item, this is probably what was referred to! Earlier I read the CNES website, where it was mentioned that Mr. le Gall was invited for the TF1 news. I thought that if there was going to be any news about a next contact with Philae, then this would be a good PR moment with the CNES director himself on TV.

[neo56]

I watched TF1 news with Mr Le Gall interview but he said nothing more than what was previously announced on the ESA website.

[brellis]

Great news! What discoveries are yet to come, and will we learn more about Philae's adventures on the surface in these intervening months? Did it get bumped around by an outgassing or some surface rumbling? Did it move from where they thought it was when the batteries ran out to a place that gets more sun light? *gets popcorn ready*

Confidence was expressed by the mission team that it could reboot as it has; I had wondered if it could survive another orbit and get rebooted 6.5 years from now. Chances of that seem very slim based on this from the BBC article:

Many people had worried that the very low temperatures endured by the lander on the icy comet could have done irreparable damage to its electronic circuitry.
The fact that both its computer and transmitter have fired up to contact home indicates that the engineering has stood up remarkably well in what must have been really quite challenging conditions these past seven months.

[nprev]

Very exciting news indeed, and a triumph for the mission engineers.

Remember that despite the initial good news I'm sure that there will be several days (at least) of checkout activity, and Philae is in what is arguably the most dynamic surface environment ever experienced by a lander. Let's root for the team and be grateful for every bit we get.

[deglr6328]

Wow, this site still exists....and I somehow even remembered my password after I don't know how many years!

Anywhats, I heard a scientist interviewed on the BBC who said the first priority of the mission would be to drill another comet sample and analyze it!?! Is this REALLY the case? Obviously they need to do a lot of work waking individual instruments back up and transferring old accumulated data, but even then is it possible to repeat the sampling experiment at all? I was under the impression that the COSAC instrument exhausted its helium carrier gas for the GS/MS and maybe some other consumables during the first attempt in the initial battery powered 60hr science window. Can anyone inform further?

[katodomo]

Only one oven for COSAC was filled (or supposed to be filled) by SD2 as far as I know. Since the system is built for multiple (26) runs I would assume that the helium regulator with its two tanks doesn't just fully open its valve on the first sample and let it run till dry. Even then a drilled sample could still at least be evaluated under the CIVA MI spectroscopic microscope.

Since the SD2 and Ptolemy/COSAC require quite a bit of power drilling won't be on any priority list though.

[MahFL]

I think they concluded no solid sample got into the oven, and it was gas that was analyzed.

[vikingmars]

Vikingmars, did you perhaps watch the 20:00 TF1 news? Monsieur Le Gall was announced but I can't pick up TF1 to hear what he has to say, so much for my "TripleSat" antenna dish!

In fact, nothing new : just PR from Mr Le Gall...
The REAL news about Philae are always coming from CNES' Toulouse Space Center, so stay tuned !

[ZLD]

Wonderful news!

I think this is probably one of the most interesting times in planetary exploration with the broadest spectrum of missions occurring. Two dwarf planets with Dawn at Ceres and New Horizons at Pluto, a long term comet orbiter with Rosetta, a resurrected comet lander with Philae, a (possibly) resurrected Venus orbiter with Akatsuki, tons of data streaming back from Mars and Saturn, next year Jupiter. Truly the crème de la crème of engineering feats in recent times.

[Harder]

this morning the CNES director Mr Le Gall reported on France 2 that Philae is fully awake and that a second contact was established, lasting several tens of minutes.

[climber]

Some planning info that were set up before first contact (in french) : https://rosetta.cnes.fr/fr/le-sonc-prepare-...eveil-de-philae

They plan direct science without using batteries so they'll start with the less power dependent instruments: ROMAP SESAME CIVA & ROLIS.
Plans will certainly change regarding actual situation but I'll bet for pictures been taken pretty soon since knowing Philae environment will considerably help planning.

[climber]

It looks like MUPUS would be first on the list: https://twitter.com/philae_mupus/status/610356676202491904

[Herobrine]

http://isee3.p3s.nl/philae/ has started displaying new data. So far, it looks like it's just the Rosetta systems (ESS, MSS) with actual data.

[stone]

I was under the impression that the COSAC instrument exhausted its helium carrier gas for the GS/MS and maybe some other consumables during the first attempt in the initial battery powered 60hr science window. Can anyone inform further?

COSAC has a very nice gas dosing system and it has not used much of its helium yet. So if there was no major problem during the very cold time on the comet it is likely to work again. With the active comet the COSAC and Ptolemy mass spectra will be a lot of fun to look at.

There is no house keeping data from the instruments yet, so it is a little bit early to speculate which one will be the first to be switched on.

For me the wonder is that Philae survived the 100°C below zero and is still working.

Thanks for the support!

One of the COSAC team.

[climber]

DLR says that Philae get at least 3 hours of sunlight per comet day instead of 1.3 expected. This is nearly 50% of the possible max instead of 20%, right? Not bad at all on this regard.

[TheAnt]

Absolutely amazing, Philae jumps out of the shadows and now is a busy bee!

[fredk]

this morning the CNES director Mr Le Gall reported on France 2 that Philae is fully awake and that a second contact was established, lasting several tens of minutes.

It's not clear exactly what the duration of the second contact was - BBC reports that

The Philae probe made three short contacts of about 10 seconds each at roughly 2130 GMT on Sunday... "We had another contact on Sunday night," explained Paolo Ferri, the head of operations at Esa's mission control in Darmstadt Germany. "...Saturday’s was only 85 seconds; these were 10 seconds in duration spread over several minutes."

[jgoldader]

But, SD2 wasn't able to sample the surface the first time, correct? IIRC, because of Philae's orientation, it couldn't reach the surface. Is there reason to hope for a different outcome now?

(That said, I'm very pleased to hear Philae's back in action, and hoping for some more images at the very least.)

[Bill Harris]

I am particularly looking forward to the CONSERT data...

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experimentD...id=2004-006C-08

--Bill

[Harder]

Fredk, you are right - the weight of twitter-evidence today points at seconds, rather than minutes, of connect time. Perhaps he meant the time of the total comm session incl. listening in when he mentioned "minutes".
Anyway, I posted a comment to the Philae awake blog post from ESA, respectfully asking for a daily status update. Even "no news today" would be most welcome to contain my excitement and interest for a next 24 hrs!

[stone]

Fredk, you are right - the weight of twitter-evidence today points at seconds, rather than minutes, of connect time. Perhaps he meant the time of the total comm session incl. listening in when he mentioned "minutes".
Anyway, I posted a comment to the Philae awake blog post from ESA, respectfully asking for a daily status update. Even "no news today" would be most welcome to contain my excitement and interest for a next 24 hrs!

This is a good update, in German, sorry.

http://www.dw.de/rosetta-muss-ihre-antenne...hten/a-18518860

[Paolo]

and an update from DLR in English
http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.as...#/gallery/16734

[climber]

More news from ESA here: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operatio...ntense_planning

[climber]

The kind of stories we all love to read here: http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/06/15/ho...rd-from-philae/

[cIclops]

http://isee3.p3s.nl/philae/ has started displaying new data. So far, it looks like it's just the Rosetta systems (ESS, MSS) with actual data.

Looks like real Philae data. According to the ESA Rosetta glossary ESS refers to the Electrical Support System of the lander. It's temperature value was updated 16.06.2015 07:37:30 and shows an increase to 21.43 °C.

[fredk]

From the Rosetta lander user manual:

The Electrical Support System (ESS) is part of the overall Lander system, but not mounted within the Lander itself. It is integrated on the ROSETTA Orbiter and provides all interfaces required between the Orbiter and Lander units.

the Lander Mechanical Support System (MSS)... is also physically installed on the Orbiter

[4throck]

Just look at the top image on:
http://isee3.p3s.nl/philae/

The system locations are indicated on Roseta and Philae.

[ollopa]

The webmaster at http://isee3.p3s.nl/philae/ confirms that these are old data. Notice the other readings, which relate to pre-delivery status. S/he says: "....I've been meaning to update....."

[climber]

Rosetta blog: http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/06/16/pr...etta_to_listen/
I would expect science from the surface as early as next week when Rosetta will reach the right "orbit".

[pac56]

Interview with Philippe Gaudon, project head at CNES about first re-contact with Philae (in french):

https://rosetta.cnes.fr/fr/jai-eu-la-chance...eveil-de-philae

[chuck0]

Regarding the Philae telemetry page:
while it is correct that the webmaster of that site mentioned that he should probably update it he did also mention that it is showing the latest data on twitter. The only parameters that are currently updated correctly for Philae are PSSH_C_SBat_CH as well as PSSH_C_SBat_DCH which are solar panel current and rechargable battery current. Most data is from the 13th but there are also a few measurments from the 14th.

[alphasam]

Interesting comment from Gaudon about the battery recharging, not seen that before. If true that's brilliant as that was previously mentioned as one of the possible failure points from the low temperatures.

[Gerald]

They've been prepared to operate without the battery, directly with power from the solar panels.
But now there seems to be a chance, that the battery can be charged, and operated as initially planned.

[Explorer1]

Press conference coming up in half an hour:

http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/esalive

[Paolo]

Press conference coming up in half an hour:

I'm on site at le Bourget! i will try to record it on my phone

[Paolo]

if you have any question for the press conference let me know!

[4throck]

Press conference coming up in half an hour:

http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/esalive

Lot's of interesting data being shown, including a landing site model, camera field of view and orientation, etc.
Very interesting.

[Explorer1]

They are being so thorough in their presenting that I'm struggling to find anything to ask!


Archive should be here once it's done.

http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Keywords/...By%29/published

[DoF]

I have at least one question Paolo.
How about MUPUS PEN (the hammering penetrator), are they going to run that again? They didn't list it in their risky instrument suite (they did mention MUPUS as one of the first experiments to be run, but then they were referring to the thermal sensors). Obviously you can't redeploy the penetrator, so I suppose it depends on how it lies.

Edit: My questions aren't that important, but here is another one anyway.

Perhaps a way too soon to speculate, but any chance they will try to move (hop) Philae when winter starts approaching again on its side of the comet hemisphere for an of chance of sampling yet another location?

[Explorer1]

Looks like they're confident that they can turn Philae in the right direct to (eventually) drill the surface!

Also great preview of science results; carbon-rich materials cementing the ice grains, rather than the reverse. Papers getting published in a few weeks.

[Paolo]

sorry, I was not able to record with the mobile and read the forum at the same time

[DoF]

They didn't take that many questions anyway. The most interesting part to me was probably what Explorer1 mentioned, although I suppose that's a long way off.

[Greg Hullender]

Looks like the next opportunity for contact with Philae will be on Friday.

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/06/15/scien...h-comet-lander/

[Floyd]

Here is the revised Philae position from the article in Spaceflight Now .

[fredk]

That revised Philae position image was released last week (always best to cite the original).

[Habukaz]

...and we got more contact.

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/611894877417291776

[Greg Hullender]

Slightly more data on today's contacts. There were two contacts, each 2-minutes long. 185 packets of data were collected.

They didn't say when the next contact would be, but they ended with this:

"The Rosetta and Philae teams will be closely monitoring subsequent transmissions between the spacecraft, not only to better determine the health of the lander, but also to understand the length and frequency of available communication timeslots. This information is needed to determine when to upload new commands in order to restart science operations and, similarly, when the data can be downloaded."

http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/06/19/ro...-contact-again/

[alphasam]

A bit more info,

http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.as...#/gallery/17198

The two previous transmissions contained status information from early May showing Philae was at least awake by then.

[MahFL]

"In the meantime, new commands have been uploaded to Rosetta to further adjust its trajectory and distance from the comet to improve the radio visibility between the two spacecraft, with the first sets of thruster burns having taken place this past Wednesday and the next set planned for Saturday morning. The goal is to bring Rosetta to about 177 km from the comet nucleus and keep it in a range of latitudes that maximise opportunities for lander communication."

rosetta-and-philae-in-contact-again

[DoF]

Looks like contact was made today as well, although I haven't seen any reports about it.

[chuck0]

Yes, http://isee3.p3s.nl/philae/ again has been updated with new data from Saturday. Quite a bit more than on previous contacts so i would assume that the connection got more stable. Another interesting thing is that some kind of periodicity becomes apparent when looking at the data... i wonder what that is about. Anyways, it will be interesting to see whether they really can start to use for example the MUPUS PEN sensors next week.

[nprev]

Periodicity, huh? Could be a great many things. I'd assume that the lander-orbiter link is the highest priority right now, so I'm not sure what would interrupt it except for Rosetta downlinking that data to Earth. Does it perhaps correlate to Rosetta's orbital period around the comet at this time?

[chuck0]

Really hard to say what the source is since i dont think the time axis in that chart always corresponds to the actual time the data was recorded (the DLR blog mentioned that some data was from May...). Instead it seems like it is the time it was received on the ground. Anyways it nearly looks like a heartbeat



The reported time between those spikes in current is really short (around five seconds).

[stone]

Instead it seems like it is the time it was received on the ground. Anyways it nearly looks like a heartbeat

Could it be that the time stamp is the receiving at the rosetta orbiter?

I think at -135°C temperature and no energy at all the internal time keeping of Philae became bogous anyway.
There was no downlink to Philae so were should the timing come from?

[Herobrine]

I do believe the timestamps originate on the ground, or on Rosetta, and are not based on the data from the lander. There are multiple reasons to think this is true, but the most telling reason is that this data is supposed to be from much earlier, perhaps even May, from what I've heard, but the timestamps appear to correspond with the days the data were received.

I've been working from the assumption that the cyclical nature of the battery data reflects the day/night cycle from Philae's location.
I dump the raw data from that server to a CSV file and play with it in Excel.
I like to imagine that Philae is trying to describe the surrounding terrain to me with its battery data as the shadows move across the panels.

That's just multiple cycles of one of the data series since Philae woke up, lined up side-by-side to form a surface, in case you're curious. Interestingly (to me), that particular data series doesn't seem to show up in the charts on the telemetry page, and the series aren't labeled in the raw data from the server, so I have no idea what it even represents.
(I dug through the javascript of that page once, back in November, to figure out what was what and what it was doing to the data before displaying it, but I've forgotten all of that and don't feel like doing it again right now.)

Here's a graph of the time (in milliseconds) between data points over the span of the new data (since the 14th or whenever):

Vertical axis is logarithmic. The highest peak corresponds to a gap of 4 days 16 hours. Assuming the timestamps are added by Rosetta, I'd like to think the relatively flat, long stretch is indicative of a more stable connection. If they're added on the ground, they could just represent different downlink modes on DSN or something; who knows; I really lack the context and background to draw any informed conclusions from any of this.

Edit/Update:
There were a few tweets from @DutchSpace over the weekend about the telemetry.

https://twitter.com/DutchSpace/status/612163178101907456 (includes chart)

After orbit change of @ESA_Rosetta it looks like we got another telemetry blip from @Philae2014 #lifeonacomet

https://twitter.com/DutchSpace/status/612167466211495936 (includes chart)

As @Philae2014 is sending more telemetry blips I can update my graph, will have to fine tune it over the weekend.

https://twitter.com/DutchSpace/status/612539793386401792 (includes chart)

Looks like the @ESA_Rosetta orbit changed worked, much more data points from @Philae2014 coming in

I noticed that the label for the bottom chart has been updated so it looks like there is/was some work being done to improve the telemetry page.

As long as I'm editing, I might as well throw out more wild speculation. If the number of data points is correlated with the number of packets received, then, given the 300 packets reported for the first communication session, and the 84 data points for the first block of new telemetry data, one could guess that the current total of 336 data points received since wake-up indicates about 1200 packets (actually, the math of 336 * 300 / 84 comes out to exactly 1200) have been received so far out of the I-forget-how-many packets they said were stored on Philae.

[alphasam]

Interesting, if not entirely positive, article from Le Point (in French) apparently regarding conversations with Gaudon,

http://www.lepoint.fr/astronomie/mission-r...938939_1925.php

Gist is it says there were two further contacts over the weekend on Saturday and Sunday, but none with uninterrupted communication windows longer than 2 minutes. They need at least 15 minute windows apparrently to upload commands to Philae. Says they'll try to get Rosetta down to 160km around Wednesday.

[scalbers]

Interesting they mention uncertainty in the orientation of Philae. I had thought they earlier stated they had a good sense of that. And the mosaic I had made, with the help of Mattias' sun vector also gives some potential information about orientation, with an estimated 80 degree tilt compared with the "local" surface. We can even see the CONSERT antenna in the mosaic. The specification of orientation is better though before the rotation maneuver, though we can get a sense of this by the shift in the ROLIS images before/after.

[alphasam]

I suspect the point is Philae might not be in the orientation they left it, if it is tilted more on its head that might explain the communication difficulties.

[scalbers]

Makes sense that Philae could have shifted. I believe though the CONSERT antenna projects off the lower part of one of the sides, unless there's another reason the head (top) would be important.

[chuck0]

We didnt hear anything form the mission today... i just hope that they dont run into another safe mode. The Startracking failure graph they showed at the last press conference was pretty scary.



The blue line represents how many issues there have been with the star trackers and the dotted grey one is the distance to the comet. X-Axis is comet distance to the sun... Even when they kept far away from the nucleus the star trackers now seem to have tons of problems so close to the sun.

[ollopa]

I note that people are still commenting on the http://isee3.p3s.nl/philae/ data. My understanding is that this has NO relation to actual Philae data. The webmaster told me as much a week ago. Unless someone can cite a recent confirmation that this is now reliable, I suggest it cannot be relied upon.

[Herobrine]

Well, I quoted several tweets from @DutchSpace (mentioned at the top of the telemetry page) several posts back in this thread, but maybe seeing is believing.

https://twitter.com/DutchSpace

[chuck0]

I assume this guy is the web master right?

https://twitter.com/DutchSpace/status/612539793386401792

as far as i understand it there are only a few variables updated properly right now. The whole upper graph is useless (is this what you mean when you said "the webmaster told me as much"? ). The only relevant stuff are some of the current measurements in the lower one ( PSSH_C_SBat_CH and PSSH_C_SBat_DCH are current from the solar panels and the recharchable battery discharging current). If this is not really data from Philae then it at leasts corresponds nicely with the times contact was reported...

[alphasam]

Makes sense that Philae could have shifted. I believe though the CONSERT antenna projects off the lower part of one of the sides, unless there's another reason the head (top) would be important.

Philae communicates through an S band antenna on the head. It has a visibility cone of 60 degrees to the positive z (straight up). So if Philae is pointing to the ground....

[Herobrine]

For what it's worth, the bottom graph at http://isee3.p3s.nl/philae/ is fed by the same data source as http://www.musc.dlr.de/philae/telemetrie.html (the science sequence graph is the only one that includes the new data), but the isee3 page has a much easier-to-use graph and is being maintained (for example, over the weekend the lower graph was relabeled). The data that feeds the bottom graph on the isee3 page can be accessed at http://www.musc.dlr.de/philae/db_pss-statu...h_v_sbat-c.json and the data that feeds the bottom graph of the DLR page can be accessed at http://www.musc.dlr.de/philae/db_curent_5_...h_v_sbat-c.json (this is the exact same data as the other one, but with the pre-landing data omitted).

[scalbers]

If Philae is still pointing as in this mosaic, we can see the top of the lander is aimed generally at (or a bit left of) Perihelion Cliff (green dot in center of yellow solar circle). Thus I wonder if Rosetta is possibly being maneuvered to catch the line of sight pointing just above Perihelion Cliff, thus at a latitude more to the north? This would actually not be at the zenith of Philae's latitude. North is in the center of this mosaic.



Is there a way to check Rosetta's current latitude? How much of the 60 degree cone is pointing above Perihelion Cliff? Is alphasam's 60 degree figure an angular radius?

[Herobrine]

Well, I've tried at multiple points during the day today and every time, I've found that the data sources the isee3 page uses for Philae telemetry ( http://www.musc.dlr.de/philae/db_pss-statu...h_v_sbat-c.json for the power systems) are now 404ing. If you've been watching it to spot new data from Philae, you can still use the URL the DLR telemetry page uses ( http://www.musc.dlr.de/philae/db_curent_5_...h_v_sbat-c.json ). It has contained identical data to the other one, with the exception that the data set doesn't include pre-landing data.

[Herobrine]

I see 4 new data points in the telemetry (the battery data, specifically), with the following timestamps:
2015-06-24 17:24:11
2015-06-24 17:28:35
2015-06-24 17:33:00
2015-06-24 17:37:24
Prior to these, the last data point had a timestamp of 2015-06-21 02:44:16.
Hopefully, this means we'll be hearing that contact was made today.

The raw data corresponding to the 5 data points I mentioned (including the last one from the contact several days ago):

CODE

1434854656879,28.7708,24.4642,0,0,2.855,2.312,41.34,1.26,38.85,356.314,220.968,1
.085,1.09,28.908
1435166651336,0.04275,0,0,0,3.997,3.468,27.56,0,5.25,384.958,11.016,0.868,0.872,
0.876
1435166915804,28.7024,28.8982,0,0,2.284,2.312,9.54,25.2,35.7,389.732,20.304,1.30
2,1.09,0.876
1435167180367,28.7024,28.9642,0,0,2.284,2.312,55.12,0,34.65,381.052,26.568,0.868
,0.872,0.657
1435167444992,28.8563,28.8836,0,0,1.713,1.734,9.54,55.44,38.85,386.911,35.64,0.8
68,0.654,1.314

[chuck0]

Thanks for posting this data! Was already wondering whether they disabled the public api completely.
I guess since there are only four new data points they are still struggling to get a stable connection. I wonder if they will consider leaving the terminator plane to get a longer communication window...