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Rosetta: Decision due on comet landing site | Rosetta: Decision due on comet landing site |
(8 months later) | |
The European Space Agency is about to release more details of its audacious bid to try to land on a comet. | |
Since early August, its Rosetta probe has been in close proximity to 67P/C-G - a 10-billion-tonne mass of ice and dust some 400 million km from Earth. | |
Engineers and scientists have spent the weekend debating where on the surface it might be possible to put down a small contact robot. | |
Esa is expected to announce its primary and reserve choices on Monday. | |
Whichever site is chosen will be extremely challenging. | |
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is highly irregular in shape, with a terrain that is marked by deep depressions and towering cliffs. | |
Even the apparently flat surfaces contain potentially hazardous boulders and fractures. | |
The plan still is to make the attempt on 11 November. | |
Rosetta will despatch the piggybacked Philae robot from a distance of about 10km to 67P. | |
The spider-like device will hope to engage the surface at "walking pace", deploying screws and harpoons in an effort to lock itself down. | |
It will be a one-shot opportunity. The event will take place so far from Earth that real-time radio control will be impossible. | |
Instead, the process will have to be fully automated with commands uploaded several days in advance. | |
To successfully soft-land on a comet would be a first in the history of space exploration. | |
But Esa cautions that this high-risk venture should be seen as an "exciting extra" on the Rosetta mission. | |
The major objective from the outset has really been to catch the comet with the Rosetta probe and to study it from orbit. | |
This is happening right now. In the past few days, Rosetta manoeuvred to within 30km of 67P - close enough to be gravitationally bound to the "ice mountain". | |
The spacecraft's array of remote-sensing instruments are currently investigating the comet's properties, endeavouring to find out how the object is constructed and from what materials. | |
"Everything we've discovered at 67P/C-G so far says that we've chosen a fantastic comet to visit," said Dr Christopher Carr, a principal investigator on the Rosetta Plasma Consortium instruments. | |
"There's a genuine sense of excitement within the Rosetta community, and we're all looking forward to the year ahead. | |
"No spacecraft has ever orbited an active comet before, so there's a lot to learn about spacecraft and instrument operations, but we've got a really robust mission carrying some of the best instrumentation possible, and I have to say that the operations teams at the European Space Agency are doing a great job - they are true professionals," the Imperial College London scientist told BBC News. | |
But, of course, an in-situ analysis of the surface chemistry would be a huge boon to the mission overall, and this is what Philae aims to provide. | |
It will carry a drill to pull up comet samples into an onboard laboratory. | |
The long-list of five Rosetta candidate landing sites | |
Scientists and engineers went into their weekend deliberations in Toulouse, France, with a long-list of five potential landing sites. | |
In reducing that number to two, they will have assessed the very latest imagery to be downlinked from Rosetta. | |
And they will continue to study the pictures in the run-up to the final go/no-go decision on the landing site, which is expected in mid-October. | |
Irrespective of the outcome on 11 November, Rosetta will continue to follow 67P for at least a year. | |
The probe will get a grandstand view of the comet as it warms on a swing around the Sun. | |
67P's ices will vaporise, throwing jets of gas and an immense cloud of dust out into space. | |
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos | Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos |
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