They found the Philae probe missing for two years – Observer

It was noble mission that led to the small space probe Philae beyond our atmosphere: discover the little known world of comets the secrets of the origin of our planet. In November 2014, the ride from the mothership Rosetta, Philae became the first object built by man to land on a comet. Your new home would 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a comet that walks in the solar system between the orbits of Earth and Jupiter. But something went wrong and Philae was lost from radar screens of the International Space Station (ESA). Forever, he thought himself. But Philae reborn cosmic death: Monday, ESA announced that discovered the whereabouts of the missing probe two years ago. The new images sent by the space probe Rosetta, whose mission ends in less than a month, show little Philae trapped between the rocks of the comet where he landed in 2014.

Ten years after saying “goodbye” to Earth , Philae showed signs of life 510 million kilometers from home. From there, its function was wandering the icy comet and find clues to explain us how the solar system was born. While everyone celebrated – Google to put the robot in place of the “O” in its logo – the scientists came to grappling with a problem: 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko had a harder surface than expected. It was from there that the fate of Philae seemed to become increasingly black:. There, in the shadows of the comet, the spacecraft was unable to feed the energy of the sun and went into hibernation

World I was surrendered to Philae: is that before entering a silence that seemed eternal, the probe managed to discover organic compounds rich in nitrogen and carbon, two essential elements for the existence of life. Even on his deathbed, Philae had discovered that the origin of life on Earth may even be comets. Scientists have made the machine mourning when she woke up, when the comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko approached the Sun, ESA received signs of life of Philae, which had managed to take a little more solar energy to return to work. But it was short lived:. Philae could never survive the cold and hard world’s comet, so the ESA decided to close all channels of communication with the small probe in July

But Philae is a phoenix reborn … ice. When scientists analyzed the latest images sent by Rosetta, they realized the presence of an object that surprised them. It was Philae, with its cubic body with an edge meter and its three legs resting among the rocks of the 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The joy of ESA was then shared on Twitter and received, so far, almost 1,160 of “likes”. Although they know Philae will never wake up, the discovery of his whereabouts is essential for scientists:. Knowing its exact location is easier to analyze the latest data sent to Earth

What about Rosetta? According to the statement sent by ESA, Rosetta will be placed on the route to comet crashing to 30 September, ending a cosmic odyssey with twelve. With it also destroys the Osiris camera, which over several years brought to Earth enlightening images of comets in the solar system.