PHILAE TouchDown on COMET #67P

PHILAE on #67P

After more than 10 years travelling through space, PHILAE the spaceship that got its name from an island on the river Nile, where it was found the obelisk which allowed to decode the Rosetta Stone, has successfully descended on the surface of Comet #67P and grabbed to the rock with 3 harpons that anchored the lander securely to the surface.

PHILAE is full equipped with the latest technology in order to get acquired measures at the surface. Existing jets and geysers will be evaluated, real surface temperatures, gravity and a highly sophisticated equipment will "read" and perform combustion and chemical analysis from the 4.5 billion years old comet composition, sending afterwards its results, through the solar and battery powered ' antennas, first to Rosetta and from there to ESA, on Earth. 

Getting Together

Comet 67P/Churyumov- Gerasimenko on a close shot by Rosetta's NAVCAM

Every shot looks closer, every bit of this Comet seems to wonder where will Rosetta land next November on the day that a small spaceship and the rock will meet.

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is being scrutenized for the past few months by Rosetta powerful  cameras, from a distance of 27.8 km above the comet's centre. The image covers an area of about 2 x 1.9 km and focuses on the smaller of the two comet lobes. 

It's visible one of the primary landing sites called  J 'above' located on the distinctive depression. Every thing points out that it will be the chosen spot to dock Philae, the small lander developed by ESA which will be grabbed to the comet in order to perform the first attempt to collect samples from a moving rock comet surface.

November is near and all the incredulous eyes are set on the screen for a new era. 

For now every moment in being set for a major advance in science, that moment when two strangers will meet in space.

67P/Churyumov-GERASIMENKO - A Comet with a diversity of surface structures

67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko - Credits: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM

67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the most photographed comet of all times, shows on the last Rosetta shootings a diversity of surface structures

In the image, the comet’s head (in the top half of the image) exhibits parallel linear features that resemble cliffs, and its neck displays scattered boulders on a relatively smooth, slumping surface. 

In comparison, the comet's body (lower half of the image) seems to exhibit a multi-variable terrain with peaks and valleys, and both smooth and rough topographic features.

Comets are time capsules containing primitive material left over from the epoch when the sun and its planets formed. 

Observations planned for this mission will help scientists learn more about the origin and evolution of our solar system, and the role comets may have played in seeding Earth with water. Rosetta's lander will obtain the first images taken from a comet's surface and will provide the first analysis of a comet's composition by drilling into the surface. 

Let's see if we have more clues about what happened on the Big Bang.

Credits: Nasa

ROSETTA - August 6th 2014 - Comet CLOSE UP

Stunning close up detail focusing on a smooth region on the ‘base’ of the ‘body’ section of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. 

The image was taken by Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera and downloaded on August 6th clearly showing a range of features, including boulders, craters and steep cliffs. 

Taken from a distance of 130 km, Rosetta will be orbiting the comet till November 9th, the day all ESA scientists are looking forward once it'll be the first day in history when a spacecraft will land on a comet.

On that day, ROSETTA will absolutely be the shinning STAR.

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

ROSETTA - RENDEZ-VOUS with COMET 67P/CHURYUMOV-GERASIMENKO

After a 10-year, 4-billion-mile journey through deep space, a European probe will finally arrive at its comet destination this week.

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft is scheduled to rendezvous with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko today, August 6th. If all goes according to plan, Rosetta will become the first probe ever to orbit a comet — and, in November, the first to drop a lander onto the surface of one of these icy wanderers.

6th August approach

January 20th 2014 - Wake UP! Rosetta

Today is the BIG day that ESA has been waiting for to wake up Rosetta which has been hibernating since 2011. 

Let's hope that everything goes well along with scheduled.

Mission: ROSETTA - Landing on COMET 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has its name due to the ukranian scientist who discovered it

(see in 720p HD)

If you were curious about my last post and the scheduled Rosetta's mission, here is a short movie produced by ESA which allows us to know with more detail about what scientists are up to with this mission and what space knowledge can we expect to get further on finding the origins of the universe.

Synthetically this will be the longest duration encounter with a comet. It involves a spacecraft called Rosetta, which will map the comet surface and its magnetic fields.

After 6 months orbiting the comet, which is 4 Km long with the shape of a potatoe, a Lander will be detached. 

This lander, called Philae, got its name from the island on the Nile, in Egypt, where was found the obelisk which allowed to decode the Rosetta Stone, so I'm sure that this name will function as an encouragement for scientists hopefully decoding on this mission some of the mysteries that may lay on the comet' s nucleus.

Philae will descend from Rosetta to the surface and as soon as it touches it, once there's little gravity, there will be 3 harpons that will anchor the lander securely to the surface.

The Lander is full equipped with the latest technology in order to get acquired measures at the surface. Existing jets and geysers will be evaluated, real surface temperatures, gravity and a highly sophisticated equipment will "read" and perform combustion and chemical analysis from the 4.5 billion years old comet composition, sending afterwards its results, through the solar and battery powered ' antennas, first to Rosetta and from there to ESA, on Earth. 

Looking forward for this great space adventure I'm sure that all data collected will give us clues about the origins of the universe and maybe, who knows, life somewhere else.

What about 2014 SPACE MISSIONS?

NASA and ESA presented their main missions for 2014.

More than 24 are active at the moment and others will be launched during this year.

Mission: ROSETTA

ROSETTA is being classified as THE one great expectation mission.
Since 2004 when Rosetta was launched, ESA has been waiting for the right moment to catch an enormous comet, land there and take as many samples and pictures as possible. Rosetta will be the "big star" of 2014, making the first-ever orbit insertion at a comet in August and attempting a landing on it in November. Images will be spectacular for sure! See the film.

In MARS two more spacecraft will be launched and they will arrived at the red planet in September 2014. Japan is also following space targets with theirs HAYABUSA mission.

MESSENGER will go on its mission to Venus and Mercury until 2015.

The twin ARTEMIS spacecraft are still happily operating at the Moon and will continue to do so through 2014.

LADEE is in its prime mission and is planned to crash into the lunar surface in March. No lengthy mission extension is possible for this mission -- its low orbit, necessary for sampling the lunar atmosphere, is a death sentence.

CURIOSITY in Mars has only one goal: TO DRIVE as much as possible in order to explore Mars soil.By the summer of 2014 the rover should be approaching the Murray Buttes, a gap between the basalt sand dunes that will allow them passage to the clay-bearing rocks they landed in Gale crater to explore.

ODYSSEY and MARS EXPRESS have had the most serious problems, but continue to do great imaging and (in the case of Odyssey) valuable relay work. Mars Express' mission is extended through 2016.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has developed a spectacular routine of wider-field imaging with its Context Camera with rapid followup of any new features with high-resolution HiRISE images, so I hope to see more new discoveries of fresh impact craters, possible water-carved features, moving sand dunes, and other geomorphology that shows Mars to be an active planet.

OPPORTUNUTY, will have its moment this winter. The rover's activities will be limited by low power. However, they have found themselves a nice north-facing slope to tilt the solar panels at the winter Sun, so they shouldn't have to park for long stretches; they'll make brief journeys from one north-facing "lily pad" to another, exploring Murray Ridge.

CASSINI, in Saturn in planned to have 11 gravity-assist flybys of Titan. All of 2014 will be spent in an inclined phase from which it can observe the effects of springtime sun on the north poles of Titan and Saturn and image the rings, while exploring the magnetosphere and plasma environment of Saturn in three dimensions. Cassini will not return to an equatorial orbit (and frequent opportunities to observe the other moons) until March of 2015. However, Cassini is currently under very real threat of cancellation. If its mission is to be ended in 2015, then a propulsive maneuver to set up that ending will be performed in 2014, canceling all those carefully-laid plans. So for Cassini the most important events of 2014 will be taking place here on Earth, in the halls of Congress and the White House.

ICE will fly past Earth in August. If we want to regain control of this aged-but-still-perfectly-good spacecraft, we must do it early this year. The budget mess is making that seem difficult to achieve. I'll report if I have any further news on that.

Juno, Dawn, and New Horizons will spend 2014 cruising to their next destinations. The latter two will be setting the stage for a spectacular 2015, what I'm calling the Year of the Dwarf Planet, when we will turn three round worlds from astronomical objects to geological objects for the first time: Ceres, Pluto, and Charon.

Voyagers 1 and 2 will be carrying their missions on, into the interstellar medium.

I'll keep on track of their important goals.

from here

New Comet Lovejoy Dazzles Holiday Sky-Watchers

Comet Lovejoy seems to dive into the sunrise as seen from Cape Schanck in Melbourne, Australia, last Friday.

Officially known as C/2011 W3, comet Lovejoy was discovered by amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy of Brisbane, Australia, in late November. The ball of ice and dust was identified as a Kreutz sungrazer, a family of comets thought to be fragments from a larger body that broke up centuries ago.

Astronomers predicted comet Lovejoy would be destroyed when it made a close pass by the sun late on December 15, eastern time. But to the surprise of many—including its discoverer—the comet survived its solar encounter and reappeared after a few hours.

more here







Photograph by Alex Cherney, TWAN

Comet Lovejoy

Once again, space station commander Dan Burbank captured the elegant "sungrazing" comet hanging above the Earth's horizon. This view was photographed on Dec. 22, the day after Burbank's first viewing session on Wednesday.

Stunning stratification of the Earth's atmosphere is very clear in this photograph. Also, the two tails of Comet Lovejoy are visible. As with all comet tails, there are two distinct types -- a dust tail and ion tail. The dust tail will often form a curved trajectory, whereas the ion tail will point directly away from the sun, aligning itself with the sun's interplanetary magnetic field.

from here








Image credit: NASA/Dan Burbank