(Photo Credit: ESA/Rosetta)
After a decade-long journey, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft has today become the first vehicle to ever rendezvous with a comet. Rosetta has now established a stable orbit around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after completing the last of a series of 10 rendezvous manoeuvres that adjusted Rosetta’s speed and trajectory to gradually match those of comet.
“After 10 years, five months and four days travelling towards our destination, looping around the sun five times and clocking up 6.4 billion kilometers, we are delighted to announce finally we are here,” said Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA’s director General.
“Europe’s Rosetta is now the first spacecraft in history to rendezvous with a comet, a major highlight in exploring our origins. Discoveries can start” he added.
(Full-frame image of Comet 67P taken from a distance of about 96 km – Photo Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM)
This historic manoeuvre signals the beginning of a new chapter in Solar System exploration. Rosetta is just 62 miles (100 kilometers) away from the comet’s surface, travelling over 55,000kph.
If any of Rosetta’s manoeuvres had failed, the mission would have been lost, and the spacecraft would simply have flown by the comet.
“Today’s achievement is a result of a huge international endeavour spanning several decades,” says Alvaro Giménez, ESA’s Director of Science and Robotic Exploration.
“We have come an extraordinarily long way since the mission concept was first discussed in the late 1970s and approved in 1993, and now we are ready to open a treasure chest of scientific discovery that is destined to rewrite the textbooks on comets for even more decades to come” Giménez explained.
(This animation comprises 101 images acquired by the Navigation Camera on board ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft as it approached Comet 67P/C-G – Photo Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NavCam)
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and Rosetta are now 252 million miles (405 million kilometers) from Earth, around halfway between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars.
Over the next six weeks, the craft will fly two triangular-shaped trajectories in front of the comet. It will first travel at a 62-mile (100-kilometer) altitude, and then down to 31 miles (50 kilometers).
At the same time, the spacecraft’s suite of instruments will provide a detailed scientific study of the comet, scanning the surface to identify a target site for Rosetta’s lander, Philae, which will land on 67P in November.
Eventually, Rosetta will attempt a close, near-circular orbit 19 miles (30 kilometers) above the comet’s surface. Depending on the activity of the comet, the craft may come even closer.
(Close-up detail of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko – Photo Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS et al)
“Arriving at the comet is really only just the beginning of an even bigger adventure, with greater challenges still to come as we learn how to operate in this unchartered environment, start to orbit and, eventually, land,” says Sylvain Lodiot, ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft operations manager.
Up to five possible landing sites will be identified for Philae in late August, before the primary site is identified in mid-September. Philae is currently expected to be deployed onto the comet on November 11th, however a final date for the historic landing will be confirmed by the middle of October.
“Over the next few months, in addition to characterizing the comet nucleus and setting the bar for the rest of the mission, we will begin final preparations for another space history first: landing on a comet,” said Matt Taylor, Rosetta’s project scientist from the European Space Agency’s Science and Technology Centre.
(Another image of Comet 67P – Photo Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM)
Comets are time capsules containing primitive material left over from the early years of the Solar System when the sun and its planets first formed. The Philae lander will obtain the first ever images taken from a comet’s surface and it will drill into the surface of the comet, providing the first ever analysis of a comet’s composition.
“After landing, Rosetta will continue to accompany the comet until its closest approach to the Sun in August 2015 and beyond, watching its behaviour from close quarters to give us a unique insight and realtime experience of how a comet works as it hurtles around the Sun” Taylor added.
The craft will accompany the comet for over a year as it swings around the sun and back out towards Jupiter again, making Rosetta the first spacecraft to witness, at close proximity, how a comet changes as it is subjected to the increasing intensity of the sun’s radiation.
These observations will help scientists learn more about the origin and evolution of our solar system and the role that comets may have played in seeding Earth with water, and perhaps even life.
For the latest information and news on Rosetta and Comet 67P, head over to the ESA’s Rosetta blog.
You can watch the highlights of Rosetta’s arrival at Comet 67P below:
[Video Credit: ESA]
The Solar System & Beyond 