According to the European Space Agency (ESA), the Philae Lander may get the sunlight it needs to wake up as early as March at the earliest, but it could be May or even June before it has enough power to begin communicating again.

In a recent post on the ESA’s Rosetta Blog, the team behind the mission updated information on the search for the lander and Rosetta’s ongoing mission.

If the lander had hit and remained at its original landing target, Philae would have received 6.5 hours of light for each 12.4 hour comet day. By March temperatures would have been too high for the lander to function. ESA researchers may also face another problem that was not planned for, instead of being too hot to function the cold may have damaged it.

As things stand, assuming that Philae is where the agency thinks it is and hasn’t been severely damaged by the cold, it will receive just 1.3 hours of illumination per day but the heat issue has been avoided.

“Now we need the extra solar illumination provided by the comet’s closer proximity to the Sun by that time in order to bring the lander back to life,” says DLR’s Lander Project Manager Stephan Ulamec in a statement.

By May, the sun will be shining directly on the location of the lander, but even then the lander will not be able to take full advantage of the situation because of it’s orientation. In other words, the position of Philae and its solar panels will prevent it from getting as much light as it could.

While the lander could begin to wake up in March, but researchers expect it to be May or June before the lander has enough power to use its transmitter and contact Rosetta. “The lander needs about 17 Watts to wake up and say ‘hello’,” says the ESA statement.

After the lander re-establishes communication, it will take longer still before Philae is ready to turn on its instruments and perform scientific tests again. That means that, if everything goes well, Philae could be fully functioning when the comet, Comet 67P/C-G, reaches its closest point to the sun.

“We are already discussing and preparing which instruments should be operated for how long,” adds Ulamec.

Clearly there are still many things that could go wrong or keep the lander from operating as well as researchers would like. Even without any further data from Philae however it has already sent back a considerable amount during it’s landing and before it switched off.

“…it’s important to remember that it already completed its first science sequence on the comet, unexpectedly providing information from multiple locations on 67P/C-G,” said the ESA.

With or without the Philae data, Rosetta will continue following the comet as it orbits the sun and returns to the outer solar system.

According to Rosetta’s original mission plan, the spacecraft will stop functioning sometimes around December, 2015. However, as NASA’s Voyager mission has demonstrated, things do not always go the way they are expected to.

Updates and photography from the Rosetta mission can be found at the ESA website.