No signals heard from comet lander Saturday

BERLIN (AP) — The European Space Agency received no signals from the Philae lander Saturday morning during a scheduled effort to establish communication, the mission chief said.

Paolo Ferri, ESA's head of mission operations, told The Associated Press that the Rosetta orbiter did not get any signals from the lander on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The picture released by the European Space Agency ESA on Nov. 12, 2014 was taken by the ROLIS instrument on Rosetta's Philae lander during descent from a distance of approximately 3 km from the 4-kilometer-wide (2.5-mile-wide) 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet. © ESAFile/AP Photo The picture released by the European Space Agency ESA on Nov. 12, 2014 was taken by the ROLIS instrument on Rosetta's Philae lander during descent from a distance of approximately 3 km from the 4-kilometer-wide (2.5-mile-wide)…

ESA on Friday ordered a rotating operation to pull the lander out of a shadow so that solar panels could recharge the depleted batteries.

Even if that operation was successful, it may take days or weeks until the batteries of Philae are strong enough to send signals again.

"We don't know if the charge will ever be high enough to operate the lander again," Ferri told The AP ahead of the 1000GMT (5 a.m. EST) listening time.

"It is highly unlikely that we will establish any kind of communication any time soon, but nevertheless the orbiter will continue to listen for possible signals."

On Wednesday, Philae landed next to a cliff that largely blocked sunlight from reaching its solar panels.
The historic landing climaxed a 10-year journey aboard the Rosetta space probe. Since alighting on the comet, some 311 million miles (500 million kilometers) distant from Earth, the lander has performed a series of tests and sent back reams of data, including photos.