Update: Philae woke up! On June 13, the European Space Agency received signals from the little lander on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, transmitted by the Rosetta probe in orbit around it. Even better news: It looks like Philae has been awake and collecting data for some time—the packet it sent to the ESA included historical information.

Here's what ESA said:

The signals were received at ESA's European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt at 22:28 CEST on 13 June. More than 300 data packets have been analysed by the teams at the Lander Control Center at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). "Philae is doing very well: It has an operating temperature of -35ºC and has 24 Watts available," explains DLR Philae Project Manager Dr. Stephan Ulamec. "The lander is ready for operations." For 85 seconds Philae "spoke" with its team on ground, via Rosetta, in the first contact since going into hibernation in November.

ESA knew this was possible. Back in March ESA mission controllers said they hoped to ping the lander when it had been exposed to more power-giving sunlight. They had planned to try in April and May—and this, their third attempt, finally paid off.

Original Story: Today the European Space Agency released images that may point to the final resting place of its lovely lost lander, Philae.

Philae landed on the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on November 12 last year, after a 10 year journey as part of the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission. Unfortunately, upon touching down on the dirty iceball, Philae's harpoons failed to fire correctly. (The landing, meant to trigger the harpoons, was softer than expected.)

Instead of anchoring to the landing site, Philae bounced, became airborne for about two hours, touched down again, became airborne a second time, this time for a few minutes, and eventually came to permanent rest more than a kilometer away from its initial touchdown point.

Images that Philae beamed back to the spacecraft Rosetta suggested the lander had settled in some kind of ditch. The walls around the lander blocked out sunlight, depriving Philae of the ability to recharge its batteries. The lander sent home images and materials and magnetic readings from the comet's surface with what stored power it had, before going to sleep 64 hours after landing.

Since then ESA researchers have been poring over before and after pictures, taken with Rosetta's cameras, of areas where the lander is suspected to have come to rest. The highest resolution pictures were taken with the spacecraft's OSIRIS narrow-angle camera in mid-December, as part of a dedicated search for Philae.

A number of promising candidates show up in the images—bright spots visible now that don't appear in earlier captures. Whether any of these are indeed Philae isn't certain; the resolution isn't quite high enough to tell. OSIRIS can resolve 34 centimeters for each pixel, and since Philae is just 1 meter across, it will show up as only a few pixels.

"The later in the evening and the more wine you drink—the more landers you're able to identify in this terrain," joked Stephan Ulamec, lander manager, at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union General Assembly this April in Vienna. (Watched the televised press conference. Ulamec's comments are at 20:50.)

Wherever it's at, Philae may wake from hibernation in the coming weeks. The comet is moving closer to the sun, and if it receives enough power it could boot up and once again resume transmissions to Rosetta.

Keep your fingers crossed.