{"id":4875,"date":"2015-06-24T07:41:48","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T07:41:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=4875"},"modified":"2015-06-24T07:41:48","modified_gmt":"2015-06-24T07:41:48","slug":"rosetta-mission-extended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/rosetta-mission-extended\/","title":{"rendered":"Rosetta mission extended"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Rosetta<\/a>
Rosetta approaching comet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The adventure continues: ESA confirmed that its Rosetta mission will be extended until the end of September 2016, at which point the spacecraft will most likely be landed on the surface of Comet 67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rosetta was launched in 2004 and arrived at the comet in August 2014, where it has been studying the nucleus and its environment as the comet moves along its 6.5-year orbit closer to the Sun. After a detailed survey, Rosetta deployed the lander, Philae, to the surface on 12 November. Philae fell into hibernation after 57 hours of initial scientific operations, but recently awoke and made contact with Rosetta again.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rosetta\u2019s nominal mission was originally funded until the end of December 2015, but at a meeting today, ESA\u2019s Science Programme Committee has given formal approval to continue the mission for an additional nine months. At that point, as the comet moves far away from the Sun again, there will no longer be enough solar power to run Rosetta\u2019s set of scientific instrumentation efficiently.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is fantastic news for science,\u201d says Matt Taylor, ESA\u2019s Rosetta Project Scientist. \u201cWe\u2019ll be able to monitor the decline in the comet\u2019s activity as we move away from the Sun again, and we\u2019ll have the opportunity to fly closer to the comet to continue collecting more unique data. By comparing detailed \u2018before and after\u2019 data, we\u2019ll have a much better understanding of how comets evolve during their lifetimes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Comet<\/a>
Comet on 5 June 2015 \u2013 NavCam<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Comet 67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will make its closest approach to the Sun on 13 August and Rosetta has been watching its activity increase over the last year. Continuing its study of the comet in the year following perihelion will give scientists a fuller picture of how a comet\u2019s activity waxes and wanes along its orbit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The extra observations collected by Rosetta will also provide additional context for complementary Earth-based observations of the comet. At present, the comet is close to the line-of-sight to the Sun, making ground-based observations difficult.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the activity diminishes post-perihelion, it should be possible to move the orbiter much closer to the comet\u2019s nucleus again, to make a detailed survey of changes in the comet\u2019s properties during its brief \u2018summer\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, there may be an opportunity to make a definitive visual identification of Philae. Although candidates have been seen in images acquired from a distance of 20 km, images taken from 10 km or less after perihelion could provide the most compelling confirmation.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the extended mission, the team will use the experience gained in operating Rosetta in the challenging cometary environment to carry out some new and potentially slightly riskier investigations, including flights across the night-side of the comet to observe the plasma, dust, and gas interactions in this region, and to collect dust samples ejected close to the nucleus.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the comet recedes from the Sun, the solar-powered spacecraft will no longer receive enough sunlight to operate efficiently and safely, equivalent to the situation in June 2011 when the spacecraft was put into hibernation for 31 months for the most distant leg of its journey out towards the orbit of Jupiter.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, Rosetta and the comet will again be close to the Sun as seen from the Earth in October 2016, making operations difficult by then.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, with Rosetta\u2019s propellant largely depleted by that time, it makes little sense to place the spacecraft in hibernation again.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cThis time, as we\u2019re riding along next to the comet, the most logical way to end the mission is to set Rosetta down on the surface,\u201d says Patrick Martin, Rosetta Mission Manager.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut there is still a lot to do to confirm that this end-of-mission scenario is possible. We\u2019ll first have to see what the status of the spacecraft is after perihelion and how well it is performing close to the comet, and later we will have to try and determine where on the surface we can have a touchdown.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If this proposed scenario were played out, then the spacecraft would be commanded to spiral down to the comet over a period of about three months.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is expected that science operations would continue throughout this period and be feasible up to very close to the end of mission, allowing Rosetta\u2019s instruments to gather unique data at unprecedentedly close distances.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once the orbiter lands on the surface, however, it is highly unlikely to be able to continue operations and relay data back to Earth, bringing to an end one of the most successful space exploration missions of all time.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The adventure continues: ESA confirmed that its Rosetta mission will be extended until the end of September 2016, at which point the spacecraft will most likely be landed on the surface of Comet 67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rosetta was launched in 2004 and arrived at the comet in August 2014, where it has been studying the nucleus and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1.jpg",625,351,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1-300x168.jpg",300,168,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1.jpg",625,351,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1.jpg",625,351,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1.jpg",625,351,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1.jpg",625,351,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1.jpg",625,351,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1.jpg",625,351,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1.jpg",600,337,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1.jpg",600,337,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1.jpg",625,351,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1.jpg",550,309,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1.jpg",95,53,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1.jpg",625,351,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1.jpg",96,54,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rosetta_approaching_comet_large1.jpg",150,84,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}