on saturday the spacecraft had dipped to within nine miles -lrb- 14 km -rrb- of the surface to take a closer look at the jets that are being ejected from its surface .
but during the manoeuvre , rosetta lost sense of where it was due to the amount of dust and gas and was placed into ` safe mode ' , causing it to momentarily lose contact with earth .
` not the best month to choose to go dry ... ' rosetta project scientist dr matt taylor quipped on twitter .