A photo from open sources
On March 12th, European scientists tried to “awaken” the Fila spacecraft currently located on surface of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Signal sent at four Moscow time, however, there is still no answer followed.
Patrick Marten, the project manager, said that he, along with colleagues and did not have much hope about the awakening of the probe. The experts just decided to start sending the spacecraft signals so that if one day he returns to performance, it was possible to quickly get over it the control.
Fila is a lander designed for landing on a comet. In March 2004, the European Union sent him into space explore the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. A whole decade has passed while the probe joined the comet. Unfortunately, last November years he moored to the dark side of the comet and very quickly discharged without access to solar radiation.
European scientists are sure that at the moment the device is already accumulated enough solar energy to convert it into electrical and “wake up” by responding to signals from Earth. The software embedded in the on-board computer “Fila”, allows him to make independent attempts to establish contact with us every half hour, however, while he did not.
At the beginning of the year, the probe transmitted to the earth the results of a study of the comet. According to the data obtained, the mass of the celestial body is about ten billion tons, which, by the way, is not so much, because the density of the comet’s substance is four hundred and seventy kilograms per cubic meter. Hence we can assume that Churyumova-Gerasimenko has numerous hollow areas.
