BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Rosetta is on the comet - her mission is completed

Wow! News from ESA today. The Rosetta mission will end at the end of this month. It seemed possible that the little lander Philae would not be found before then. It was lost on the comet in November 2014, but from images taken three days ago, it has been found.

Here is the main image with an inset to show the lander.



Credits
Main image and lander inset: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA; context: ESA/Rosetta/NavCam – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

This is so cool!

Here is how Philae got lost in the first place. He landed on the target spot, but due to a malfunction didn't grab onto the comet's surface. Two bounces took him into a dark place which meant the solar panels couldn't recharge when the batteries ran out, and no one could quite work out where he was. Until a few days ago!

It is so awesome that we are able to do have these things! It is a shame that we still have not figured out a way to travel long distances outside our planet but also a blessing considering what we are doing to Earth and also all the junk that is outside (i think most of it ends up falling back here - and also think we left quite a bit of things behind when we went on the Moon)!

Rosetta's mission ends on September 30th, but meanwhile she's still collecting data about the comet. ESA released this image taken from a distance of 5 km - whew, that's close!

They say,

Wow that is so cool!

From left to right the pits measure 125 m, 130 m and 140 m across and are 65 m, 60 m and 50 m deep, respectively.

Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

On 30 September, Rosetta will descend towards a smooth region in Ma’at, on the smaller of the two lobes of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It will target a region that is home to several active pits measuring over 100 m wide and over 50 m deep, with the hope of getting some close-up glimpses of these fascinating features.

The pit adjacent to the target site and identified in the image above as Ma’at 02 has now been named by the mission team: Deir el-Medina, after a pit in an ancient Egyptian town of the same name. Many of the workers that built the pharaoh tombs in the Valley of the Kings lived there. The pit was originally – and unsuccessfully – dug to find water. The pit then became something of a refuse pit for unwanted bits of pottery. This was a delight to archaeologists studying the history of the town, and the astronomers hope the pit on Comet 67P/C-G will help them understand the comet's history in a similar way.

Only a week to go now before Rosetta's epic mission is complete. ESA has prepared a video timeline of the Rosetta mission accompanied by music by Vangelis from the new album. I love it!

Today (Sept 26), the Rosetta Mission is being tracked by five ground stations: ESA's 35m dishes at Malargüe, Argentina, and New Norcia, Australia, and by NASA's deep space network dishes DSS 14 (60 m, Goldstone, USA), 55 (34 m, Madrid, Spain) and 43 - this one is the 70 m antenna at Canberra...hern hemisphere.

The Rosetta mission ends on Friday.

Three more days before Rosetta joins Philae on the comet, saying her last good-bye as one of the most extraordinary space missions ever conceived comes to an end. A delightful - and informative - little cartoon from ESA: Once upon a Time - Rosetta's Grand Finale.

In Once upon a time... Rosetta's second year at the comet, Rosetta describes the exciting discoveries she made during her second year at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, after the comet made its closest approach to the Sun along its orbit. She also tells us about her efforts to contact Philae, and starts counting down to her own mission finale.

(Published on 1 Jul 2016)

Rosetta has flown about 6.4 billion miles during her mission. But the mission ends on Friday - the rest of her travels will be around and around the Sun on a comet, but ESA won't be able to talk to her after Friday.

Why is the mission ending? ESA answers some frequently asked questions.

Animation visualizing Rosetta's descent to the comet's surface tomorrow. The sequence is speeded up to show the relative motion of Rosetta and the rotating comet below. Rosetta will target a smooth region close to several large pits measuring more than 100 m across and 60m deep, on the small lobe of the comet.

The impact time is predicted as 11:20 GMT +/- 20 minutes on 30 September.

You can find the latest updates here.

The final animation in the story of Rosetta and Philae shows this amazing mission completed.

Explore Rosetta's Comet

What would it be like to fly around a comet nucleus? If your browser is WebGL-compatible, you can do that. Click here to see if your browser is suitable. If it is you can load ESA's detailed digital model of Comet 67P and go exploring.

With a standard mouse, the left button lets you rotate the comet, the right button lets you move the comet around, and the scroll wheel lets you zoom in. ESA's robotic

Rosetta spacecraft orbited Comet C67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko from mid-2014 until last Friday, when, after a remarkable and successful mission, it was intentionally set down on the surface and powered down. Among many notable scientific achievements, Rosetta allowed humanity to better understand where comet jets form on comets as they near the Sun.

(Thanks to Astronomy Picture of the Day for the heads up on this.)

Here is a short video that shows the last images Rosetta sent back of the comet. I particularly liked the one that looked like a goofy animal. If you watch it, be sure to glance at the distances shown on the left. You can see Rosetta getting closer and closer.

Rosetta's remarkable mission to study Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko was completed at the end of last month when the spacecraft landed on the comet.

Sadly, the mission of Soviet-Ukrainian astronomer Klim Churyumov, who discovered Rosetta’s comet with Svetlana Gerasimenko, ended today. He died aged 79. Churyumov was the Director of the Kiev Planetarium, member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the International Astronomical Union, of the New York Academy of Sciences, editor of the magazine "Our Skies" (Ukrainian: Наше Небо) in 2006-2009, president of the Ukrainian Society of amateur astronomy and author of books for children.

I've come across an interview with Svetlana Gerasimenko, co-discoverer of the comet on which Rosetta landed.

I have to admit that I didn't know much about her and her colleague Klim Churyumov. The interview was over twelve years ago, but it was still interesting. Sadly, Churyumov died two weeks ago, but I'm glad that he lived to see the brilliant Rosetta mission to its end.