Last mile of the ship ‘Rosetta’ to reach the comet – The País.com (Spain)

Rosetta spacecraft, that left Earth a little over 10 , arrives tomorrow to your target: Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko a solar system body made of ice and dust, shaped rubber duck and about four miles long that is now between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, three and a half times the distance between Earth and the Sun If all goes as planned, the automatic probe of the European Space Agency (ESA) will orbit the comet and accompany you on your journey towards the Sun to study closely the changes are coming. The meeting tomorrow will be 100 kilometers 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko surface, which has been revealed some of their characteristics, such as temperature and form in recent weeks, as the Rosetta , laden with cameras and sensors, was closer and closer to encompass and slowing its speed to the comet.

67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko The core seems to be composed of two lobes, one slightly larger than the other, joined by a neck. The pictures taken by the cameras ship late last month showed the comet giving a complete turn on itself every 12.5 hours with a very rough surface. “The neck of the comet, ie, the area that connects the two core segments, should give important clues to the evolutionary history of the comet”, say experts from ESA. “The study of this region closely, not only through images, but also with other instruments for its composition, will help determine if the comet is the result of two separate bodies that have merged or whether it is a single object that has eroded dramatically to the way we see. ” This form of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, with a large ball and a smaller, do you remember when scientists rubber duck.

A month ago, the comet (made of water ice, carbon dioxide, methanol and ammonia, plus dust), yet nearly 600 million miles from the Sun, it was emitting the equivalent of two glasses of water per second into space. “At this rate the comet would fill an Olympic swimming pool in about 100 days, but as you approach closer to the Sun, the gas production will increase significantly. With Rosetta have an amazing strong position to observe these changes closely and find out why exactly they occur, “explained Sam Gulkis, principal investigator of one of the instruments of the ship, Miro, developed in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (California) in collaboration with NASA’s mission.

class=”texto_grande”> The celestial body is shaped like a duck rubber, scientists say

Comets interest to scientists because they have not had to change much from the training phase of the solar system, does one 4,600 million years, so they must keep important clues that remote time. Some experts even expect this mission have something to contribute to the hypothesis that life came to Earth in comets. 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko meets around the Sun every 6.4 years and its closest approach to the star is between the orbits of Mars and Earth.

If all goes well in the next hours and days Rosetta will be the first spacecraft into orbit of a comet and will also be the first time a probe accompany one of these objects in the solar system on its journey to the sun also Rosetta takes another scoop of space exploration: a probe ( Philae ), 100 kilos, which will come off the ship this November to descend to the surface of the core the 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko; deploy three legs and will engage with spears to the ground from where you take multiple data and images. The total cost of the mission of the ESA is 1.3 million.

The ship will approach 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko further 100 kilometers of the first meeting tomorrow. Is scheduled for August 24 has been estimated to 50 kilometers from the surface of the core and finally, on September 10, Rosetta will orbit the comet 30km. The complicated approach maneuvers began a few weeks ago igniting engines ship in well calculated to be losing speed phases. Now complete the complex trajectory is planned to put into orbit small relatively unknown celestial object an artifact of some 3,000 kilos (at launch, including fuel), 2.8 x 2.1 and 2 meters and with two large solar panels 14 meters long each.

The total cost of the mission of the ESA is 1.3 million EUR

The Rosetta (which covered part of the journey to the comet in hibernation, with off-board equipment for two and a half years) will travel 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko now with its closest approach to the Sun, within a year, and about six months later, to go away from the star. The spacecraft carries 11 scientific instruments on board (165 kilos in total) and Philae , nine (21 kilos). Construction of the mission has commissioned the industrial consortium Astrium, based in Germany, with the participation of fifty companies from 14 countries, including several Spanish technologically important contributions

At 70 degrees below zero

The average temperature of the comet’s surface is about 70 degrees Celsius. It seems very low, but is actually too high: if it were only a layer of clean ice which covers 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, sensors Rosetta spacecraft have measured 20 or 30 degrees less. So the mission scientists conclude that, as suspected by the light that had caught telescopes, the comet is covered by a layer of dark dust, with some areas of clean ice.

” This result is very interesting because it gives us the first clues about the composition and physical properties of the comet’s surface, “said Fabrizio Capaccioni scientist, head of Virtis Rosetta instrument with which they were taken temperature measurements between 13 and 21 July, when the ship was still at 14,000 and 5,000 miles from the target, according to the ESA late last week. Then 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet, 555 million miles from the sun (more than three times the distance from Earth to the star), it was only a couple of pixels on the sensor that captures the thermal infrared emission.

“The Virtis immediately begin to generate maps showing the temperature of specific traits [comet],” says Capaccioni. It will also allow to study the thermal variation in specific areas to know how fast they react to sunlight This will give clues about properties such as thermal conductivity, density and porosity of the surface layer of the comet.