Rosetta's solar panels as seen by Philae's CIVA imaging system on April 14, 2014. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA
Philae is awake… and taking pictures! This image, acquired last night with the lander’s CIVA (Comet nucleus Infrared and Visible Analyzer) instrument, shows the left and right solar panels of ESA’s well-traveled Rosetta spacecraft, upon which the 100-kilogram Philae is mounted.
Philae successfully emerged from hibernation on March 28 via a wake-up call from ESA.
After over a decade of traveling across the inner Solar System, Rosetta and Philae are now in the home stretch of their ultimate mission: to orbit and achieve a soft landing on comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It will be the first time either feat has ever been attempted by a spacecraft. Read more here.
Source: ESA Rosetta Blog
It’s not always possible to observe the night sky from the surface of the Earth.…
SpaceX is flying again after the Federal Aviation Administration ruled that the company can resume…
When we think of Jupiter-type planets, we usually picture massive cloud-covered worlds orbiting far from…
Venus is known for being really quite inhospitable with high surface temperatures and Mars is…
When the James Webb Space Telescope was launched it came with a fanfare expecting amazing…
The extrasolar planet census recently passed a major milestone, with 5500 confirmed candidates in 4,243…