{"id":5215,"date":"2015-07-14T07:25:37","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T07:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=5215"},"modified":"2015-07-14T07:25:37","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T07:25:37","slug":"rosetta-preparing-for-perihelion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/rosetta-preparing-for-perihelion\/","title":{"rendered":"Rosetta preparing for perihelion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Comet_around_perihelion_large\"<\/a>
Comet around perihelion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rosetta\u2019s investigations of its comet are continuing as the mission teams count down the last month to perihelion \u2013 the closest point to the Sun along the comet\u2019s orbit \u2013 when the comet\u2019s activity is expected to be at its highest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rosetta has been studying Comet 67P\/Churyumov\u2013Gerasimenko for over a year now, with observations beginning during the approach to the comet in March 2014. This included witnessing anoutburst in late April 2014<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and the revelation of the\u00a0comet\u2019s curious shape<\/span><\/a>\u00a0in early July.<\/span><\/p>\n

After arriving at a distance of 100 km from the double-lobed comet\u00a0on 6 August<\/span><\/a>, Rosetta has spent an intense year analysing the properties of this intriguing body \u2013 the interior, surface and surrounding dust, gas and plasma.<\/span><\/p>\n

Comets are known to be made of dust and frozen ices. As these ices are warmed by the Sun, they turn directly to vapour, with the gases dragging the comet\u2019s dust along with it. Together, the gas and dust create a fuzzy atmosphere, or coma, and often-spectacular tails extend tens or hundreds of thousands of kilometres into space.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

While ground-based observations can monitor the development of the coma and tail from afar, Rosetta has a ringside seat for studying the source of this activity directly from the nucleus. One important aspect of Rosetta\u2019s long-term study is watching how the activity waxes and wanes along the comet\u2019s orbit.<\/span><\/p>\n

The comet has a 6.5 year commute around the Sun from just beyond the orbit of Jupiter at its furthest, to between the orbits of Earth and Mars at it closest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rosetta rendezvoused with the comet around 540 million km from the Sun. Today, 13 July, a month from perihelion, this distance is much smaller: 195 million km. Currently travelling at around 120 000 km\/h around their orbit, Rosetta and the comet will be 186 million km from the Sun by 13 August.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cPerihelion is an important milestone in any comet\u2019s calendar, and even more so for the Rosetta mission because this will be the first time a spacecraft has been following a comet from close quarters as it moves through this phase of its journey around the Solar System,\u201d notes Matt Taylor, ESA\u2019s Rosetta project scientist.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking forward to reaching perihelion, after which we\u2019ll be continuing to monitor how the comet\u2019s nucleus, activity and plasma environment changes in the year after, as part of our long-term studies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rosetta\u2019s investigations of its comet are continuing as the mission teams count down the last month to perihelion \u2013 the closest point to the Sun along the comet\u2019s orbit \u2013 when the comet\u2019s activity is expected to be at its highest. Rosetta has been studying Comet 67P\/Churyumov\u2013Gerasimenko for over a year now, with observations beginning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large.jpg",625,352,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large-300x168.jpg",300,168,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large.jpg",625,352,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large.jpg",625,352,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large.jpg",625,352,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large.jpg",625,352,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large.jpg",625,352,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large.jpg",625,352,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large.jpg",600,338,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large.jpg",600,338,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large.jpg",625,352,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large.jpg",550,310,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large.jpg",95,54,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large.jpg",625,352,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large.jpg",96,54,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Comet_around_perihelion_large.jpg",150,84,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Research<\/a> Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5215","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=5215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}