August affair: Rosetta on a striking mission, to meet Churyumov-Gerasimenko

With a distance of around 814 million kilometres from Earth, Rosetta is expected to meet comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko or 67P, this August. Assisted by eleven other scientific board instruments, it will orbit the comet till December 2015, so as to gather minute and detailed information about the ‘cometary materials’.

Scientists believed that studying the surface materials of the comet in depth would help them in getting an idea about the composition of dust particles that might act as foundation of comet’s activity.

Sleeping beauty, Rosetta, woke up after spending more than 30 months in hibernation. The European Space Agency (ESA) at Darmstadt, Germany, received a signal at 7.18 p.m CET (Central European time) on January 20^th 2014 that released the worries of the Scientists about Rosetta's well being  in space.

Earlier during the day on January 20^th, several internal commands were kicked off by the ESA’s Rosetta space probe. The scientist at the Main Control Room appeared apprehensive until Rosetta said, “Hello World”.

Even I was also very excited and anxious at the same for this amazing event. I was catching it through Live stream. The whole day I sat in front of the laptop, patiently waiting for that spectacular moment just to see Rosetta sending an ‘All is well’ signal.

The ongoing mission will take a giant leap when the Philae lander, a three-legged lander, equipped with nine auxiliary trials, will touch down the surface of the comet in November 2014, creating a history in the space science.

Well, talking about comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko or 67P, it’s an unevenly formed body, having an average diameter of approximately four kilometers and relentlessly piercing into the path of the inner solar system.

Having originated from Kuiper belt (a ring-shaped area primarily seen at the outer periphery of the planetary system), 67P is highly comprised of cosmic rocks and nearly 30 times farther from the Sun. All the comets in the Jupiter family including 67P, spend most of their life in the icy pits of the planetary system as a lifeless lump of frozen gas. It is believed by the Scientists that comets falling under Jupiter family, are a few of those comets, whose materials are untainted, uncontaminated and have been preserved since the origin of our solar system.

Klim Ivanovich Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko at the Astrophysical Institute in Alma Ata, were first to notice the inconspicuous rock in the year 1969, on a photographic plate.

This mission would also see an enormous contribution from the scientists’ based at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany. They would help in controlling and monitoring certain instruments chiefly, the OSIRIS camera system & the COSIMA dust analyser firmed to the Rosetta orbiter and the COSAC gas analyser on the Philae lander.

It would be early to say about the real outcome of the mission, as there are numerous uncertainties that can create an outcry like landing of the Philae onto the fine dust or losing a balance generated by the boulders and many such others.

Hope is a word that everyone lives with. Let’s really hope that this adventurous space mission comes up with flying colors and accomplishes its objective.

Courtesy: Max Planck Society

Image: Google