The journey of the Rosetta probe, the mission of the European Space Agency (ESA), which led to the first spacecraft built by humans to reach a comet and put a probe on its surface, reaches its finale this Friday, September 30.
After a controlled descent, Rosetta will terminate its operations and will remain on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, a chunk of ice and rock about the size of the island of Providence, that at this moment is located somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, away from the Sun more than 100 times the speed of a commercial aircraft.
After overcoming budget cuts, considerable technical obstacles, and the retirement of the NASA project, the crossing space of Rosetta began the March 2, 2004 with its launch from the Space Center of Kourou in French Guyana.
it Is the materialization of the efforts of hundreds of scientists who sought to continue the observations made by Giotto, the probe that was able to approach nearly 600 kilometers of the nucleus of Halley’s comet during its pass near to our planet in 1986, and designed a mission to continue to study the origin of water on Earth and the presence of precursor molecules of life in the Solar System by measuring directly the composition of a comet nucleus.
After traveling more than 6.5 billion kilometres, Rosetta reached comet 67P in August 2014 and never walk away from him. Before his arrival, we had taken samples of the glue to develop the comets when they throw in his path towards the Sun, we had observed their cores and up to the had violently with other probes. But never before had observed in detail its surface. We had never recorded the jets of gas
that are released as the comet approaches the Sun, or we had measured its gravity, is too weak to keep Rosetta in orbit, or recorded from near its magnetic field. Neither of us had perched on its surface.
on 12 November 2014, Philae, a probe equipped with 10 sophisticated tools of measurement, but with just the size of a small refrigerator, are separated from Rosetta towards the surface of the comet, marking a milestone in space technology, and starring in one of the episodes more exciting for the scientific exploration in the past few years.
After a drop solo since 22 kilometres in height, the anchoring systems failed and Philae bounced without control to move more than a kilometer of the surface, drowning out the cries of euphoria from the technicians of THIS and letting the world expectantly to the development of the events that many have dared to compare it with the equivalent of the arrival of man to the Moon for this generation.
it was Not until 2 days later when the THAT revealed to the world the first image taken from the surface of a comet. Philae revealed the richness of the dark surface of a world of rock and ice, but it also confirmed the bittersweet fate of the probe. Philae still worked, but it was in a position that is not allowed to recharge their batteries, leaving the scientists to just a few tens of hours to make the first direct measurements of the nucleus of a comet and transmit them back to Earth via Rosetta.
despite numerous efforts to move the probe and to bring its solar panels to a better orientation, Philae went into hibernation after 64 hours of measurements without anyone to know even their exact location on the comet’s surface.
Although Philae just came back into operation for a few brief moments. However, scientists still continue to analyze the data you managed to collect. Today we know that this region of the comet is covered by a layer of granular material deposited on a plate of ice compact. Among the materials identified by Philae in this region are 16 organic compounds, four of which are identified for the first time in a comet. The presence of these molecules in a comet, an object that is a relic of the formation of the Solar System, implies that the processes of formation of materials
precursors of life forms that have happened in our neighbourhood for a long time.
Meanwhile, Rosetta continued to closely observing the comet, revealing ever more detail to its surface and recording the jets of gas and dust ejected while it approached the Sun. The analysis of the composition of the gases emitted by the comet already showed that the water in the comet is substantially different to that of the water in the seas of the Earth, suggesting that it is very unlikely that these have been formed by the impact of comets such as 67P, how to be accepted until then. This result returns the attention to the asteroids as the primary source of water on our planet, something that will attempt to demonstrate the mission OSIRIS-REx NASA to collect samples from the asteroid Bennu in 2018.
Every minute that the scientific instruments of Rosetta recorded the comet’s nucleus, we obtain fundamental clues that some day, probably not today or tomorrow, will be part of the puzzle is to understand how a planetary system like our own and are formed planet where bloom forms of life as diverse as those that exist on Earth. But Rosetta is not immune to the hostile environment by which he has traveled during the past few years and since I started to move away from the Sun, in August 2015, began the last stage of their journey next to the comet.
While away beyond the orbit of Mars, Rosetta is is becoming more and more difficult to maneuver in and its solar panels manage to collect less energy to maintain their operations and continue communication with the Earth. That’s why it was decided that their fate would be to terminate its interplanetary journey about the comet, running one last maneuver that would land on its surface at the same speed as a person walks by a park.
The swan song of Rosetta arrived at the beginning of this month when the images taken during the maneuvers of approximation less than 3 kilometers above the comet revealed the exact position of Philae, wedged in a crack with one of his legs pointing straight up, and just as I had imagined, the scientists who had sought for months. It was the perfect ending to a story that has kept the eyes of the world in a comet during its journey through the
Solar System, shown at the same time, the creativity and the tenacity of the human determined to explore it.
Rosetta is not designed to land and is very unlikely to survive the descent. But it will continue to record until their last few seconds of the details of Ma’at, an area rich in wells that emit jets of dust that will become the final resting place of the space vehicle. It will be the end of an exciting interplanetary travel, but it will be the beginning of an adventure for the scientists who understand the valuable comments. It will be the end of the cruise of the mission that came to our minds one of the worlds of ice and rock that once in a while furrow our skies. It will be just a chapter of the history of those who have decided to explore and try to understand the universe, not only to fear him.
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