World News
Just a few hours until historic comet landing attempt begins─── SABRINA DEAN 07:40 Wed, 12 Nov 2014
Bloemfontein - A ten year journey over a distance of more than 6.4-billion kilometres is expected to come to an end this afternoon as scientists attempt to land an object about the size of a washing machine on a comet travelling in outer space.
The Rosetta comet chaser was launched on a mission led by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2004 and rendezvoused with the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on August 6 this year.
The ESA says on its website the Rosetta is the first mission in history to rendezvous with a comet and escort it as it orbits the Sun.
Today scientists are expected to launch the Philae Robotic Lander, with the aim of safely landing it on the comet’s surface to collect research data.
The ESA says detachment of the Philae Lander is expected to commence just after 11am, local time, and touchdown should follow around seven hours later.
Visit http://rosetta.esa.int/ for live streaming of events as they unfold.
National Geographic reports that other spacecraft have made contact with comets before, but only as impacts or crash landings such as the Deep Impact probe that smashed into a comet in 2005.
The ESA says on its website the Rosetta is the first mission in history to rendezvous with a comet and escort it as it orbits the Sun.
Today scientists are expected to launch the Philae Robotic Lander, with the aim of safely landing it on the comet’s surface to collect research data.
The ESA says detachment of the Philae Lander is expected to commence just after 11am, local time, and touchdown should follow around seven hours later.
Visit http://rosetta.esa.int/ for live streaming of events as they unfold.
National Geographic reports that other spacecraft have made contact with comets before, but only as impacts or crash landings such as the Deep Impact probe that smashed into a comet in 2005.
If today’s landing is successful, Philae is expected to spend just under 100 days on the comet’s surface collecting data. This is in addition to other data already collected by Rosetta during its ten year journey and more recent shadowing of the comet.
According to a fact sheet on the Rosetta mission, comets are the most primitive objects in the Solar System and carry essential information about our origins. The idea is to look into the comet’s chemical compositions, which will not have changed much since its formation, therefore providing a glimpse of what the Solar System looked like when it was very young and still ‘unfinished’, more than 4600 million years ago.
One of the big questions scientists hope to answer is whether comets contributed to the beginnings of life on Earth. The fact sheet, available at http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_Media_factsheet, reads: “Comets are carriers of complex organic molecules, delivered to Earth through impacts, and perhaps played a role in the origin of life.
Moreover, volatile light elements carried by comets may also have played an important role in forming Earth’s oceans and
atmosphere.”
Rosetta is an ESA mission with contributions from its member states and NASA.
Further details and live streaming options can be found at the following web sites:
Sabrina Dean/OFM News
