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ESA’s comet-chasing spacecraft, Rosetta, wakes up after its long slumber

On the far side of the sun, out near the orbit of Jupiter, an alarm clock sounded out today, signalling that it was time for Rosetta, the ESA's comet-chasing spacecraft, to wake up from its deep sleep.

After a tense wait in the mission control room, a message was finally received from the cold, and apparently groggy, spacecraft, signalling that it was awake and ready to continue on its mission.

"This was one alarm clock not to hit snooze on, and after a tense day we are absolutely delighted to have our spacecraft awake and back online," said Fred Jansen, ESA's Rosetta mission manager, according to an agency press release.

This video from the ESA goes through the steps Rosetta took as it awakened and 'cleared the cobwebs', so to speak:

Rosetta was launched in March of 2004, on its way to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August of 2014. Once there, it will carefully orbit the comet, drawing closer to put a lander onto its nucleus in November (thus accomplishing two 'firsts' for human space exploration). After its lander, named Philae, is secure on the nucleus, Rosetta will then spend a year tagging along with the comet as it makes its closest pass around the sun (between the orbits of Mars and Earth).

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That's getting ahead of ourselves now, though. For the past 31 months, this solar-powered spacecraft has been too far away from the sun to collect enough power to run all of its systems. The science team put Rosetta into hibernation in June of 2011, and this is the first time they've heard from it since. Now that it's close enough to get power, and it's woken up, it's time for it to warm up its computers, and get ready for its primary mission.

"I think it has been the longest hour of my life, but the most rewarding so far," said Andrea Accomazzo, the Rosetta Spacecraft Operations Manager, according to the ESA. "I think we have done our job for the past years. Now we are commanding the spacecraft to get data back. We have it back — this is what we wanted for today."

(Image and video courtesy: European Space Agency)

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