ESA Fails to Rouse Philae Lander

DLR, the German Aerospace Center, this week vainly tried to reawaken the dormant Philae robotic probe, which achieved the first-ever soft landing on a comet nucleus in 2014. DLR sent a command to Philae to spin up its flywheel, which had stabilized the lander during its descent onto the comet. DLR hoped that might give Philae some angular momentum to better align itself with the sun and possibly shake some dust from its solar panels so it could recharge its batteries, which have run down.

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