{"id":174,"date":"2014-11-12T21:09:40","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T21:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.acumass.com\/?p=102"},"modified":"2020-08-26T09:27:27","modified_gmt":"2020-08-26T09:27:27","slug":"the-rosetta-mission-a-success-story-ten-years-in-the-making-which-has-travelled-4-billion-miles-to-unfold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acumass.com\/en\/the-rosetta-mission-a-success-story-ten-years-in-the-making-which-has-travelled-4-billion-miles-to-unfold\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rosetta Mission – A success story ten years in the making which has travelled 4 billion miles to unfold."},"content":{"rendered":"

ESA’s Rosetta mission made history this morning in landing a spacecraft on a 20 trillion pound\u00a0comet located 300 million miles away from Earth. Rosetta has been orbiting the comet since August this year anticipating the drop of the Philae lander following a ten year journey through the solar system. The purpose of this mission is to study a Jupiter-family comet ’67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko’. The Philae is equipped with instruments for sampling the comet nucleus and capturing images of the environment, and was successfully deployed last night from the Rosetta after a four month orbit of observation and data collection which included identifying a suitable target for Philae to land and attach itself to.<\/p>\n

The entire Rosetta concept was first conceived back in the 1970’s, approved in 1993 and launched in 2004, so this unbelievable tale of triumph has been a long time in the making. The descent of Philae from the Rosetta took seven hours in total, the landing which took place around 8:00am PST was a success although the harpoons which were meant to shoot into the ground anchoring\u00a0Philae\u00a0into the surface of the comet failed to fire.<\/p>\n

\"Agilkia\"<\/p>\n

ESA have said that the team is now assessing the failure of the Philae harpoons and plan to refire the harpoons in order to secure the attachment.<\/p>\n

The theory which gives this expedition so much weight is that, contrary to the popular misconception that\u00a0comets are simply\u00a0destructive canon balls of doom, they could easily be the exact opposite. Comets pummelling\u00a0the Earth might just\u00a0be\u00a0the reason there is life on Earth at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a big step for civilization,\u201d – Jean-Jacques Dordain, the director general of ESA.<\/p>\n

Prior to the landing, Rosetta detected a musical sound omitted from the comet very similar to rapid water droplets falling \u00a0from different heights giving range in its sound – there is no proven reason for the sound as of yet.<\/p>\n