After 12 years chasing a comet across more than 6 billion kilometers of space, European scientists will end the historic Rosetta mission by crashing the spacecraft on the surface of the dusty, icy body at the end of this month.
The spacecraft has managed several historic firsts, including the first time a spacecraft has orbited a comet rather than just whizzing past to snap some fly-by pictures and the first time a probe has landed on a comet’s surface.
It was also the first mission to venture beyond the main asteroid belt relying solely on solar cells for power.
Photo: EPA
After more than two years of circling comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, collecting a treasure trove of data that will keep scientists busy for years to come, the comet’s distance from the sun is nearing the point where solar power becomes too weak to operate the spacecraft and download data from its computers.
In the final hours of its controlled descent on Friday next week, Rosetta should be able to take close-up pictures of the comet and collect data on gases closer to the surface before joining Philae and shutting down forever.
“We haven’t been in those last 2km [to the surface] with Rosetta and we believe it’s fundamental in understanding how gases and dust get from the surface out to the outer atmosphere,” Rosetta project scientist Matt Taylor told reporters ahead of Rosetta’s end-of-mission event at the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
Those who have worked on Rosetta say it by far exceeded their expectations by surviving the trip for as long as it did.
It sent its 100kg washing-machine-sized lander down to the surface in November 2014 in what was considered a remarkable feat of precision space travel, even if the lander ended up bouncing and coming to rest in the shade where it could not be recharged.
“We were going into the unknown,” ESA head of mission operations Paolo Ferri told reporters. “The spacecraft really surprised us.”
The Rosetta mission has inspired artists as well as scientists. Electronic music composer Vangelis has produced a new album called Rosetta, with the release timed for the end of the mission.
“We knew Rosetta was going to have a big impact, but didn’t know it was going to be this big and that people would be that interested in it,” Taylor said. “It had all the components — a long journey, adventure, technological challenges and danger and of course, the reason we are there for: cool science.”
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
SHOW OF SUPPORT: The move showed that aggression toward Greenland is a question for Europe and Canada, and the consequences are global, not just Danish, experts said Canada and France, which adamantly oppose US President Donald Trump’s wish to control Greenland, were to open consulates in the Danish autonomous territory’s capital yesterday, in a strong show of support for the local government. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington needs to control the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island for security reasons. Trump last month backed off his threats to seize Greenland after saying he had struck a “framework” deal with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater US influence. A US-Denmark-Greenland working group has been established to discuss ways to meet Washington’s security concerns
RSS