'Hello Earth!': comet probe Philae wakes up

Europe's tiny robot lab Philae, hurtling through space on the back of a comet, awoke overnight and sent home its first message in nearly seven months, mission officials said Sunday. Jubilant that the nail-biting wait was over, they declared Philae may soon resume science work, opening up a new chapter in its exhilarating voyage.
"Hello Earth! Can you hear me?" the washing machine-sized lander tweeted under the hashtag WakeUpPhilae, breaking a silence that had lasted since November 15 when its batteries ran out.
"We got a two-minute... successful communication" at 2228 Central European Time (2028 GMT) on Saturday, mission manager Patrick Martin told AFP from the operations centre in Madrid.
"This was sufficient to confirm that Philae is healthy and that its sub-systems are OK in terms of energy and temperature for ongoing communication with Rosetta," he said, referring to the lander's mothership orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
The mission seeks to unlock the long-held secrets of comets - primordial clusters of ice and dust that scientists believe may reveal how the Solar System was formed.
Philae, equipped with 10 instruments, may now get a grandstand view of the gas, dust and icy crystals that blast from the comet as it gets ever closer to the Sun, scientists hope.
Perihelion, the closest point to the Sun in the comet's orbit, will be on August 13, after which "67P" will veer off again into the deeper reaches of space.
Philae touched down on the comet on November 12 after an epic 10-year trek piggybacking on Rosetta.
But instead of harpooning itself onto the iceball's surface, the lander bounced several times before settling at an angle in a dark ditch.
It had enough stored battery power for about 60 hours of experiments, enabling it to send home reams of data before going into standby mode. The hope was that better light as the comet approaches the Sun would recharge Philae's batteries enough for it to reboot, then make contact, and ultimately carry out a new series of experiments.
But three bids to make contact, in March, April and May, all came to nothing.