Goodbye Philae: Earth severs link with silent comet probe

Ground controllers bid a final farewell Wednesday to robot lab Philae, cutting communications after a year-long silence with the tiny probe hurtling through space on the surface of a comet. "Today communication with Philae was stopped," Andreas Schuetz of German space agency DLR told AFP from ground control in Cologne. Its batteries depleted, Philae's last succesful communication with Earth was on July 9 last year.