A fridge-sized robot designed to make the first-ever spacecraft landing on a comet has been successfully reawakened by European space experts, they said on Friday.
After more than three years of deep space hibernation, in a key phase of a billion-dollar mission launched over a decade ago, the 220-pound lander was revived, Agence France-Presse reported.
The spacecraft had re-established contact with Earth, and an "initial signal was received at 3.00 pm (1400 GMT) today at mission control in Cologne, Germany," France's National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), in Paris, said.
"My controllers say that I am in quite good condition after 39 months of hibernation," tweeted a Twitter account set up for the robotic lander.
"My new software has uploaded perfectly. I'll be taking a little rest now! Talk to you soon."
"The lander is travelling aboard an unmanned probe called Rosetta which will make an historic rendezvous with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, currently 650 million kilometers (400 million miles) from Earth, this summer," AFP reported. "In November, the Philae lander is due to descend to the comet, anchoring itself before using an array of 10 instruments to probe the surface and analyze its dusty ice."
Projecting spectacular tails of gas and dust, comets follow elliptical orbits around the Sun as close brushes with the star cause their surface ice to evaporate.
"Dramatic sightings over the course of human history have given birth to many myths associating these wanderers of the Solar System with great events like famines and wars," AFP reported.
However, they represent balls of ice and dust offering insights into how the Solar System formed 4.5 billion years ago, cosmologists believe.
Much of the water in today's oceans and possibly the complex molecules that prompted life on Earth is believed to have been started through comets, some scientists say.
