How Rosetta wakes up from deep space hibernation

Visualisation of how the Rosetta spacecraft wakes up from deep space hibernation, 673 million kilometres from the Sun, on 20 January 2014. Prior to entering hibernation on 8 June 2011, Rosetta was oriented so that its solar arrays faced the Sun, and it began rotating once per minute for stability. The only devices left running were its computer and several heaters. Rosetta’s computer is programmed to carry out a sequence of events to re-establish contact with the Earth on 20 January, starting