Rosetta landing success - expert responds
The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission successfully landed the Philae space probe on the surface of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, just after 5am (NZT) this morning.
The mission's attempt to land on the
giant ball of ice and dust, whizzing past at 66,000
kilometers per hour, has had scientists waiting more than a
decade and is said to be one of the most audacious space
exploits ever.A full press release, multimedia and updates can be found on the
European Space Agency website.
The SMC collected
the following expert commentary. Feel free to use these
quotes in your reporting. If you would like to contact a New
Zealand expert, please contact the SMC (04 499 5476; smc@sciencemediacentre.co.nz).
Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, Director of Victoria University's Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Group, comments:
"The successful landing of the Philae probe on a comet is a spectacular success for the European Space Agency. To be able to design and launch a vehicle that has an ultimate objective to land on such a small and distant object a decade later is a great testament to human engineering. The data collected by the probe and its parent satellite, Rosetta, will be of great value to the scientific community for decades to come. Part of the difficulty of this mission is that the gravity of the comet is very low and the material it's made of is unknown and potentially very soft, in fact we often describe comets as 'dirty snowballs'. This means that it will be hard to keep the Philae probe on the surface, but even if that's the case that will provide valuable scientific data on the composition of comets.
"For me personally it absolutely
amazing to see how projects like this capture the
imagination of the entire world and bring people together -
this is not an achievement just of one space agency, but of
humanity! It's just a great feeling to see how excited
people are about space science on a global scale today. NZ
company Rakon supplied parts of one of the experiments on
Philae - the crystal oscillators and crystal filters in the
CONSERT sounding experiment which will hopefully tell us
about the comet core, so today there is even a small part of
NZ on a comet millions of kilometres from
Earth." Prof Sergei Gulyaev, Director of AUT's
Centre for Radiophysics and Space Research, comments:
"It is incredible how things can be
calculated and planned in advance! Our ESA colleagues
started designing this space flight some 15 years ago. The
mission was launched successfully 10 years ago; it made
several orbits around the Sun, twice it passed near the
Earth getting necessary acceleration from its gravitational
field to go as far as the orbit of Mars. It passed near Mars
getting necessary speed to go as far as the orbit of
Jupiter. Finally, it made manoeuvres to approach the comet
and start moving on a synchronous orbit creating a beautiful
duet. There was the moment of truth when it had to wake up
after 10 years of flight, the flight based only on
theoretical calculations, without control or intervention
from the Earth. Then it took amazing (!) pictures of the
surface of the comet.
"My colleagues and I followed every
stage of the last 24 hours: Go/NoGo exercises, manoeuvres,
separation, and finally landing! Incredible! I feel I am so
lucky living at this time, so lucky being an astronomer at
this fantastic Golden Age of Astronomy. There will be a huge
scientific and technological impact of this mission, but
there is another component in it - philosophical, human, and
overall, I think it is really "one giant leap for mankind!"
Massive congratulations to my colleagues at
ESA."From the UK
SMC: Prof Martin Barstow, Professor of
Astrophysics & Space Science, University of Leicester,
comments: Prof Jeffrey S. Kargel, Department of
Hydrology & Water Resources at the University of
Arizona Dr Jen Gupta, outreach officer at University of
Portsmouth Institute of Cosmology, explains the significance
of today's Rosetta mission.
"The engineering achievement of the
Rosetta mission has been nothing short of amazing. The
landscape and complex geology of Comet 67P is way beyond my
wildest imagination of what a comet nucleus could look like.
The cratered, fractured, boulder-strewn surface and towering
pinnacles of ice attest to tumultuous activity of jetting
gases, and solar-heat-driven erosion of ice and collapsing
mountains of ice. These mountains are made of ice as we
know it on Earth, but there is also a noxious stew of frozen
carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, ammonia, formaldehyde, and
methyl alcohol. Comets are noxious to us, though they are
made of the kind of material that may have helped bless
Earth with life 4 billion years ago by supplying some of the
basic organic compounds and reactive gases that could have
helped initiate the first living things on our planet. It's
a wild little world, and the Rosetta orbiter and its Philae
lander have set our eyes and imaginations on this distant
land, to explore it like no comet has ever been explored
before. Landing should be taking place right about NOW!"
"The mission has had some drama over the past 24 hours. Last night Philae didn't quite switch on correctly so they had to switch it off and on again! Everything was going well but this morning it was reported that its thruster is out of action, which means that Philae will have to rely on harpoons and ice screws to stay on the surface once it lands. There is still uncertainly over what the surface will be like on landing - it could be hard rock or powdery dust.
"The Rosetta mission was launched in March 2004 and has taken 10 years to get to its destination. It went into orbit around Comet 67P on 6th August 2014, the first time a spacecraft has orbited a comet. Today is the first time that anyone has ever attempted to land a robot on a comet. Comets are essentially dirty snowballs left over from the formation of the solar system and give us an insight into what the solar system was like 4.5 billion years ago when the planets were forming. It is possible that comets brought water to the surface of Earth and possibly even the building blocks of life.
"Rosetta and Philae will help us to understand these icy
bodies as they accompany Comet 67P on its journey towards
the Sun. You can follow the missions on twitter at
@ESA_Rosetta and @Philae2014 and today's landing attempt on
the hashtag #CometLanding."
Dr. Joel Parker,
Alice deputy principal investigator and director of the
Southwest Research Institute Planetary Science Directorate,
said:"No matter what happens in the next hour,
today will mark a change, a point of reference in the
history of space science. I feel so lucky and honored to be
a part of it."
Prof John Zarnecki, Emeritus Professor of Space Science at the Planetary & Space Sciences Research Institute, The Open University, said:
"I'm currently waiting expectantly at ESOC in Germany for the today's landing of Philae on comet CG. I have a strong sense of déjà vu, as I was here in 1986 as Project Manager for one of the instruments on Giotto which spectacularly flew past Halley's Comet. Then I was here again in January 2014 as lead scientist for the Surface Science Package where I monitored the dramatic descent and landing of the Huygens Probe onto the surface of Saturn's largest moon Titan.
"Today I'm hoping to make it third
time lucky! Fingers Crossed!" Prof Ken Pounds,
Emeritus Professor of Space Science at the University of
Leicester and CEO of PPARC from 1994-98,
said:
"The current position, in which Europe is a world leader in many areas of space science, has its origins in the decision taken in 1984 (advocated by the UK and Germany) for ESA to set down its long-term science priorities. Under the leadership of Roger Bonnet, the resulting 'Horizon 2000' programme transformed Europe from a bit player to a world leader in many areas, including solar physics, cosmology and X-ray Astronomy.
"Rosetta was one of the new missions in the H2000 programme. Against substantial competition, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council was sufficiently inspired by the technical and scientific challenge of this 'comet chasing mission' to approve UK participation in 1996.
"Seeing a comet up-close as it
approaches - and then recedes from - the Sun over the next
18 months will be exciting enough. A successful touch down
of Philae will be a bonus few would have bet on all those
years ago." Prof Andrew Coates, Head of planetary
science at UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, deputy
director of MSSL, co-investigator on Rosetta Plasma
Consortium
"ESA just confirmed that telemetry is being
received from both lander and orbiter following separation -
this is an important step, and there were a tense few
minutes awaiting the confirmation." Dr David
Clements, Astrophysicist at Imperial College London,
said:
"I may be an extragalactic astronomer, working on things millions of times further away than Rosetta and comet 67P, but everyone I know, whatever area of astrophysics they work on, has been inspired by what Rosetta is doing."
[Declared interests: "I'm employed by Imperial College London which has a research group, not my own, working on Rosetta; STFC funds my research as it funds Rosetta work; I have worked and am working on other ESA missions; I have a book on Infrared Astronomy about to be released that includes a short section on comets."]
Dr Matthew Genge, Senior Lecturer in
Earth and Planetary Science at Imperial College London,
said:
"If today's landing
goes well, Rosetta will tell us if comets made our planet
blue by providing the oceans.
"This is the most difficult landing in space history, like landing a balloon in a city centre on a windy day with your eyes closed.
"Did comets deliver the building blocks of living things and start life on Earth? We may soon know with the help of Rosetta.
"Some
scientists gave spent twenty years working on this mission.
The fate of all that work lies in the final few seconds of
touch down."Earlier commentary from
the AusSMC: Professor Geraint F. Lewis, Sydney
Institute for Astronomy in the School of Physics at The
University of Sydney, comments:
"For the first time, Earth will land a space probe on the surface of a comet, with Rosetta due to touch down on Comet 67P in the next few hours.
"When safely anchored in
the extremely weak gravity, Rosetta will start to scratch
the surface to reveal the complex chemistry of the cometary
surface. We expect to find a lot of water, frozen as ice,
but also a soup of chemicals that must have rained down on
the early Earth. These chemicals, especially the water,
could have proved vital for the eventual formation of life
on this planet." Dr Alan Duffy, Research Fellow
and an astronomer at Swinburne University of Technology,
comments:
"Rosetta has spiralled around the comet taking evermore detailed pictures in order to find a perfect landing spot for its lander Philae. The first big surprise was that the comet is more like two large pieces joined together, looking at times like a cosmic rubber duck, with the lander's target on the crown of the 'head'.
"Unfortunately the surface couldn't be less inviting, with sharp, lander destroying rock and ice shards all over the surface making the landing fraught with danger.
"Rosetta will approach to within just 20km of the mountain sized frozen comet and drop the lander Philae onto it. It will be a slow fall, lasting 7 hours and without thrusters means that there's no chance to change course if a lander-destroying shard of ice and rock is underneath.
"As a result of the enormous distance from Earth the signal will take too long from ESA's space operations centre in Darmstadt meaning the entire historic journey will be automated. ESA will push a button and have 7 agonising hours to watch if the fridge-sized Philae lander makes history with the first ever soft landing on a comet.
"The craft will try to harpoon itself onto the surface as the comet's gravity is so weak it could bounce off into space.
"If successful the craft can drill into the surface of the comet, taking unique samples of a material that came from the time when our solar system first formed. A frozen fossil of the material that the planets formed from billions of years ago.
"Over the next few months comet Churyumov-Gerasminko will heat up as it gets closer to the Sun, causing the ice to boil off into space forming the comet's tail, and will be a spectacular final unique image for the Philae lander."
ENDS