The Rosetta spacecraft has reached its encounter with 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko, its target comet, after more than ten years of travel since it was launched in March 2004 Earth Probe is now by Comet, a hundred kilometers the surface of the core, both at 405 million miles from Earth, between a point between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and together they travel toward the Sun at a speed of 55,000 kilometers per hour, according to the European Space Agency ESA). 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko follows an elliptical orbit around the star that takes six and a half years to comply.
"After ten years, five months and four days' journey to our destination, circling around the sun five times and traveling 6,400 million kilometers, we are happy to announce that we are finally here," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, director of the ESA. "The European Rosetta is now the first spacecraft ever to have played an encounter with a comet, a milestone in the exploration of our origins. The findings can now begin. "
The Rosetta needs to run in the coming weeks a series of complex maneuvers to be working in orbit around 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko following a triangular path for. Later this month the spacecraft is at a distance between 50 and 70 kilometers and 10 September and is planned to place it in an orbit 30 miles above the surface of the nucleus. Meanwhile the work of all scientific instruments onboard cameras intensifies probe to characterize the celestial object.
The meeting of the spacecraft and the comet stage today culminates a dozen maneuvers began in May for gradually adjusting the trajectory and speed of the first with the second. A failure in this critical process would have meant the loss of the mission that the probe would have passed the 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko, ESA reports, whose experts control center (ESOC) in Germany are responsible for all these operations. Complications of spacecraft control not just now, even with the launching of work since the device must remain close to an object, the comet, which is gaining activity as to be encircling the sun, emitting gases and dust particles, something to keep in mind to keep the probe in the proper orbit.
"The comet began to reveal your personality while Rosetta was approaching," says the space agency. "Images taken between late April and early June, with the Osiris camera onboard the ship showed variable activity of 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the colon (the envelope of gas and dust around the nucleus) won brightness quickly then attenuated in those six weeks. "
Also, images of the comet nucleus taken at a distance of around 12,000 kilometers have shown that it is composed of two blocks connected by a neck. "This double structure is due to that formed by the merger of two separate comets at some point in the history of the solar system, or is that the comet has been eroded asymmetrically over time?" Asks Matt Taylor, chief scientist of the mission. "Our first glimpse of the comet has already given us much to think about."
"Comets can help answer fundamental questions about the formation of the solar system, the origin of terrestrial water and even on the contribution of prebiotic molecules to our planet; but we had to clear many unknowns about, for example, density, composition or internal structure of these objects, and only visiting one could make them, "says Luisa Maria Lara, researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), which participates in Rosetta's mission, specifically in the Osiris camera.
Furthermore. with the data to be taking Rosetta's scientific instruments, scientists will be determining which are the best spots for the decrease in probe Philae to the surface of the comet, scheduled for November. By the end of August they have selected five suitable sites and mid-September will decide the final.
"Today's achievement is the result of any international company over several decades," said Alvaro Giménez, ESA's scientific director. "We have come a remarkably long way since it was first discussed the concept of the mission in the late seventies, and was approved in 1993; We are now ready to open the treasure of scientific discovery that is destined to rewrite the textbooks on comets for decades. "
La Rosetta, from now on, will accompany the 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko in their journey towards the Sun. Their closest approach will be in a year between the orbits of Mars and Earth. Then you start leaving, and the spacecraft will accompany at least six months.
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