After coming to rest in the shadows when it landed on a comet in
November, Philae woke up in June, delighting scientists from the
European Space Agency, who came up with plans for several experiments
they wanted to run before working up to the most risky one - drilling
into the surface.
But with the 100kg washing-machine size lander having been silent for over a month now, those plans have been revised.
"The
problem is not power, but communications," Aurelie Moussi from space
agency CNES said in a webcast on Thursday. "We have to find something to
do in a shorter duration."
She said the priorities were now to
get pictures from the surface and also to drill into the surface, which
Philae was not able to do when it first landed in November.
Scientists
hope that samples from the surface of the comet
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will help show how planets and life are
created as the rock and ice that make up comets preserve organic
molecules like a time capsule.
The Rosetta spacecraft, which is
orbiting the comet and through which communications with Philae are
relayed to Earth, has spent two weeks at a different part of the comet.
But since Aug 11, it has been back in an area where it should be able to communicate with Philae.
No
contact has been established though and the data from the last
communications shows one of the lander's transmitters is broken.
Its two receivers are also not working as they should, Barbara Cozzoni, Philae operations engineer said.
The comet on Thursday passed the closest point to the sun on its orbit, about 185 million kilometres from the sun.
The
comet's activity levels have been increasing as it approaches the sun
and it's now shedding up to 1,000 kg of dust and enough water to fill
two bathtubs every second.
When Rosetta first approached the comet last year, the comet was giving off only about two small glasses of water per second.
Scientists
have also observed powerful gas jets, though Cozzoni said it was
unlikely that Philae could be pushed off into space by a jet.