facility:esa's european space operations centre

Reminiscing about the week of #comet #Landing
▻http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/11/17/reminiscing-about-the-week-of-comet-landing

This time last year saw the end of an extraordinary week at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. Hundreds of journalists and reporters had gathered to witness an historic endeavour as on 12 November 2014 the #Rosetta orbiter deployed the lander #Philae on the surface of #Comet_67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In this blog post, some of our media friends reflect on the events of that memorable week and on one evening in particular. Late in the evening on 14 November, two days after #philae had landed (and bounced) on the comet, three social-media eye-witnesses joined a small team of ESA communicators sitting just outside the mission control room at #esoc. Keeping an eye on Philae as it completed its scientific operations, they tweeted live what could have been the (...)

#Fun_stuff ##CometLanding #landing #rosetta

#Rosetta’s lander #Philae wakes up from hibernation
▻http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/06/14/rosettas-lander-philae-wakes-up-from-hibernation

Rosetta’s lander #philae is out of hibernation! The signals were received at ESA’s European Space #Operations Centre in Darmstadt at 22:28 CEST on 13 June. More than 300 data packets have been analysed by the teams at the Lander Control Center at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). “Philae is doing very well: It has an operating temperature of -35ºC and has 24 Watts available,” explains DLR Philae Project Manager Dr. Stephan Ulamec. “The lander is ready for operations.” For 85 seconds Philae “spoke” with its team on ground, via Rosetta, in the first contact since going into hibernation in November. When analysing the status data it became clear that Philae also must have been awake earlier: "We have also received historical data - so far, however, the lander had not been able to contact us (...)

#Landing ##CometLanding