Philae to be switched off and die after hopeful little Rosetta lander goes quiet

The space craft has been silent for a year – and we are now giving up hope

An artist's impression of Rosetta releasing it's on board robot Philae which landed on the comet's surface (ESA)

The little spacecraft that became a symbol for humanity’s hopefulness and ingenuity is going to be given up on because it has gone silent.

The Philae lander dropped onto a comet as part of the Rosetta mission, landing there at the end of 2014. It was a time of much celebration, with people delighting in the fact that humanity had somehow managed to land a space craft onto a comet many millions of miles away.

But now its carers have not heard from the hopeful lander for over a year, and we are going to give up attempting to try and talk to it. The European Space Agency announced in a blog post titled “Farewell, silent Philae” that starting on 27 July, the systems would start being powered down.

Philae announced its coming end in a post on its Twitter page, which is narrated in its own voice.

That will begin in the morning, when the Electrical Support System Processor Unit is turned off. The ESS is used to let Philae communicate with Rosetta, which is floating off the comet, and allows it to send back its findings to Earth.

Engineers had left the ESS in the hope that communications would be re-established and we would hear from Philae once again.

But those messages haven’t come since 9 July last year, and so the time has come to shut it down. Turning off that kit is an important part of the end of the Rosetta mission.

By the end of this month, the spacecraft will have journeyed more than 500 million km from the Sun, which will make it far harder for it to generate solar power. So that the ESA is able to get information from Rosetta for the remaining two months of the mission, it will look to reduce the amount of power used by non-essential parts of the mission.

Philae – which scientists had hoped would get online when the comet moved – has been quiet for so long that listening out for messages from it is no longer essential. It is now considered to be in a state of eternal hibernation.

The decision was taken by the mission manager, and the process will take place at the Rosetta Missions Operations Centre, the European Space Agency said.

The European Space Agency has asked people to share their memories of the lander in celebration of the event. It asked people to send in pictures saying goodbye to the lander.