The Philae Comet Lander Has Awoken From Hibernation

An artist's rendering of the Philae probe on Comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Credit: ESA/ ATG minilab It was a thoroughly modern announcement: before a blog post or a news conference there was the tweet. The Philae lander on Comet 67P tweeted the message, "Hello Earth! Can you hear me?" at 5:30am EDT today by way of announcing that the months of wait were over, and the lander had resumed operation. Scientists have been trying to regain contact with Philae since mid-March, listening for signals via the orbiting Rosetta spacecraft. Now the hope is that the lander will make contact again and scientists can download some of the data it has been collecting in the meantime.