Rosetta’s Philae lander has run out of battery power

Rosetta’s lander Philae, which made a historic touchdown on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko earlier this week, has run out of battery power, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Saturday. In a blog post, ESA said that the lander is now in “idle mode” and it is unlikely that communication will be reestablished in the near future. Contact with the spacecraft was lost at 6:36pm ET on Nov. 14. Philae was expected to deplete its battery power this weekend, but the event happened a little earlier than planned.