optyka: Rosetta (spacecraft)

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Rosetta was a space probe built by the European Space Agency that launched on 2 March 2004. Along with Philae, its lander module, Rosetta performed a detailed study of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (67P). During its journey to the comet, the spacecraft performed flybys of Earth, Mars, and the asteroids 21 Lutetia and 2867 Šteins. It was launched as the third cornerstone mission of the ESA's Horizon 2000 programme, after SOHO / Cluster and XMM-Newton. The total cost of the mission was about €1.3 billion (US$1.8 billion). On 6 August 2014, the spacecraft reached the comet and performed a series of manoeuvers to eventually orbit the comet at distances of 30 to 10 kilometres (19 to 6 mi). On…

Evidence: 68 • authority: 92

COSAC's Only Gas Chromatogram Taken on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.. The Philae lander of the Rosetta space mission made a non-nominal landing on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on November 12, 2014. Shortly after, using the limited power available from Philae's batteries, the COSAC instrument performed a single 18-minutes gas chromatogram, which has remained unpublished until now due to the lack of identifiable elution. This work shows that, despite the unsuccessful drilling of the comet and deposition of surface material in the SD2 ovens, the measurements from the COSAC instrument were executed nominally. We describe an automated search for extremely small deviations from noise and di…

Evidence: 62 • authority: 72

Philae ( or ) is a robotic European Space Agency lander that accompanied the Rosetta spacecraft until it separated to land on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, ten years and eight months after departing Earth. On 12 November 2014, Philae touched down on the comet, but it bounced when its anchoring harpoons failed to deploy and a thruster designed to hold the probe to the surface did not fire. After bouncing off the surface twice, Philae achieved the first-ever "soft" (nondestructive) landing on a comet nucleus, although the lander's final, uncontrolled touchdown left it in a non-optimal location and orientation. Philae transmitted images and data back to earth for about 64 hours. Despite the…

Evidence: 56 • authority: 72

67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (abbreviated 67P or 67P/C–G and nicknamed "Chury") is a Jupiter-family comet. It is originally from the Kuiper belt and has an orbital period of 6.45 years as of 2012, a rotation period of approximately 12.4 hours, and a maximum velocity of 135,000 km/h (38 km/s; 84,000 mph). Churyumov–Gerasimenko is approximately 4.3 by 4.1 km (2.7 by 2.5 mi) at its longest and widest dimensions. It was first observed on photographic plates in 1969 by Soviet astronomers Klim Ivanovych Churyumov and Svetlana Ivanovna Gerasimenko, after whom it is named. It most recently came to perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) on 2 November 2021, and will next come to perihelion on 9 April…

Evidence: 56 • authority: 92

The Philae lander mission and science overview.. The Philae lander accomplished the first soft landing and the first scientific experiments of a human-made spacecraft on the surface of a comet. Planned, expected and unexpected activities and events happened during the descent, the touch-downs, the hopping across and the stay and operations on the surface. The key results were obtained during 12-14 November 2014, at 3 AU from the Sun, during the 63 h long period of the descent and of the first science sequence on the surface. Thereafter, Philae went into hibernation, waking up again in late April 2015 with subsequent communication periods with Earth (via the orbiter), too short to enable new…

Evidence: 56 • authority: 92

The Philae lander reveals low-strength primitive ice inside cometary boulders.. On 12 November 2014, the Philae lander descended towards comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, bounced twice off the surface, then arrived under an overhanging cliff in the Abydos region. The landing process provided insights into the properties of a cometary nucleus 1-3 . Here we report an investigation of the previously undiscovered site of the second touchdown, where Philae spent almost two minutes of its cross-comet journey, producing four distinct surface contacts on two adjoining cometary boulders. It exposed primitive water ice-that is, water ice from the time of the comet's formation 4.5 billion years ago-in…

Evidence: 49 • authority: 92

ESA's Cometary Mission Rosetta-Re-Characterization of the COSAC Mass Spectrometry Results.. The most pristine material of the Solar System is assumed to be preserved in comets in the form of dust and ice as refractory matter. ESA's mission Rosetta and its lander Philae had been developed to investigate the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in situ. Twenty-five minutes after the initial touchdown of Philae on the surface of comet 67P in November 2014, a mass spectrum was recorded by the time-of-flight mass spectrometer COSAC onboard Philae. The new characterization of this mass spectrum through non-negative least squares fitting and Monte Carlo simulations reveals the chemical compo…