After two postponements, the European Space Agency launched the "Rosetta" satellite. Should meet in 2014 with a comet, study it and send a lander to it. This is an ambitious project that has never been carried out * The spacecraft is about to take off to a comet and land a probe on its surface
Avi Blizovsky
The Rosetta launch, 2/3/04, 09:17 Israel time originated in French Guiana where it was still night
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The Europeans launched a satellite to a comet
After two postponements, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the "Rosetta" satellite into space. An Ariane 5 missile took off this morning at 07:17 GMT (09:17 Israel time) and despite the unflattering record of this missile in previous launches, this time the launch went without a hitch.
The launch was supposed to take place already last week, but was postponed twice. The first time it was rejected due to strong winds in the upper layers of the atmosphere and the second time due to a problem discovered in the insulation foam. This morning, the satellite was successfully launched.
Rosetta is an ambitious project of the European Space Agency. As part of the project, the satellite will try to meet with a comet in May 2014. The satellite will study the comet for about three months and then send a lander to it, which will try to land on its surface. Such an attempt has never been made.
The scientists hope that the measurements sent by the satellite and the lander regarding the composition of the comet's nucleus and the gases emitted from it will help them better understand how the solar system and the Earth were formed.
The Rosetta launch was delayed again, this time due to faults defined as minor
27/2/2004
The launch of the Rosetta spacecraft, which was delayed yesterday due to winds at the launch site in French Guiana, has been postponed again, this time due to technical problems. The launch of the European satellite "Rosetta" was postponed for two days, after it became clear that a lack of insulating foam could cause the rocket carrying the satellite to explode.
The Rosetta launch has been postponed to tomorrow, Friday, due to stormy weather in Coro
The launch of the Rosetta spacecraft to the comet Chermoyev-Grasimenko has been delayed for at least 24 hours. The launch was planned for today at 09:36 am Israel time, but severe weather at the launch site in Kourou in French Guiana prevented the launch.
The spacecraft has been waiting for several days to be launched on an improved Ariane 5 rocket. Several missiles of this type ended their lives and the lives of the satellites on board after several launches failed. The team members, who have been working for over ten years on the design and construction of the spacecraft and are supposed to wait another 10 years for the results, are waiting anxiously.
Additional updates, in the evening update of the science website.
Rosetta is ready for liftoff on Thursday
Paul Rincon, BBC (Translation: Dikla Oren)
On the twenty-sixth of February, the space mission, which will cost 600 million pounds and will last for about twelve years, is supposed to be launched from the French spaceport "Guyana's Kourou", aboard the Ariane-5 G + rocket.
Along the way, the dangerous mission will force you to overcome many technical difficulties.
"Rosetta will be the first spacecraft to attempt a soft landing on the nucleus of a comet," England's science minister, Lord Sainsbury, said at a press conference.
"This will allow Rosetta to conduct a more comprehensive study (of a comet) than ever before."
The Rosetta spacecraft will launch a lander named "Fila" (b. loose), which will land on the icy core of comet Chermoyev-Grasimenko.
The mission fits into the strong relationship between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the study of comets, a relationship that began to develop when the Giotto spacecraft took close-up images of the core of Halley's comet in 1986.
"Rosetta is of great psychological importance to us in Europe, because we managed to get so close to Halley (with the help of Giotto). We have a soft spot for comets," Professor David Southwood, ESA science director, told the BBC.
"The most beautiful part about it is that 20 years ago we could have chosen Mars as our destination, but we chose comets."
"I don't think there's anything to regret, because in the last three years, many comet missions have appeared. I think it shows how important Rosetta is.”
The lander will investigate the materials from which the comet is evidence. It is estimated that these materials have remained more or less the same since the birth of the solar system.
"We will actually go back 4.6 billion years, to a time when the solar system was in its infancy and the planets were in the midst of the process of their formation from a cloud of gas and dust," said Dr. Gerard Schum, one of the scientists taking part in the project.
By the summer of 2014, Rosetta will enter orbit around the comet and begin to approach it. The camera on the spacecraft will map the comet's core in order to help scientists choose a suitable landing site.
Once a suitable landing spot is found, a Philae lander will be released from a kilometer away from the comet. While approaching the comet's surface at a speed of one meter per second, Tira dropped two bells, which would help her cling to the comet.
The project scientists have no illusions about the difficulty of the task they must carry out.
"The great advantage of Chermoev-Grasimenko is the fact that it can be landed on. It may sound a little strange, but the last thing you want is to bounce back from the comet or break up," explained Professor Southwood.
"This is really a shot in the dark, it's a very complicated matter."
The scientists are tasked with landing the elephant, which is the size of a washing machine, on an area the size of Heathrow Airport.
"Rosetta will be more than ten years old and at a distance of several hundred million miles, and we will have to land the lander on the comet - this is a bold mission," said one of the mission scientists Dr. Ian Wright from the Open University.
The launch will go ahead as planned despite the discovery of last-minute technical glitches in January.
Rosetta was supposed to be launched a year ago, but it grounded after the Ariane-5 rocket exploded after four minutes of flight from the same spaceport.
Rosetta's original target, the comet Virtanen, was abandoned, and the mission underwent changes following investigations into the explosion, which delayed the launch.
The European satellite will leave today for a journey to the comet
By Yuval Dror
Space / launch: this morning, landing: in 2014
Today at 09:36 am (Israel time), the "Rosetta" satellite will be launched from a launch site in French Guinea. Rosetta is at the center of one of the most ambitious programs in space exploration: launching a satellite that will "chase" a comet, fly alongside it and land a probe (lander) on its core. However, there is no reason to start getting excited right now: the dramatic encounter between the satellite and the comet is only supposed to happen in 2014.
Comets are icy bodies ranging in size from a few kilometers to hundreds of kilometers. The astronomers believe that the study of comets will help to better understand the history of the Earth and the solar system, since they contain material left over from the beginning of the formation of the solar system.
"There is no doubt that this is one of the most complicated interstellar missions ever attempted. Many things may not go well," said Dr. Gerhard Schumm, the chief scientist of the European Space Agency (ESA) in an interview with the "New York Times". "However, if the mission is successful, we will obtain information
Unprecedented on comets." Shoum refers, among other things, to the fact that this is the longest mission into space where the scientists rely only on solar power as the power to drive the satellite systems.
"Today it is clear to us that comets have made a tremendous contribution to materials on Earth that are not rocks, such as water and gases," said Prof. Akiva Bar-Nun from the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences at Tel Aviv University, who is participating in the project. "In the period after the formation of the Earth, many comets hit it, and they brought to it about a third of all the water in the oceans and contributed to the huge reservoir of materials, which eventually led to the creation of life."
For this reason, the scientists want to study the gases emitted by the comet.
The project itself began more than a decade ago, but suffered repeated postponements, partly due to faults discovered in the improved "Ariane 5" rocket that was supposed to carry the satellite into space. At the beginning of January of this year, the European Space Agency announced a new date for the launch of the spacecraft and its decision to use a regular "Ariane 5" rocket - in order not to take unnecessary risks in a project whose cost is estimated at about one billion dollars. Prof. Bar-Nun is still not calm: "At first it seemed that the rocket was taking Rosetta into space and not blowing it up in the air," he says. "One faulty cable in the missile is enough for the whole project to go up in flames," he explained.
If and when Rosetta is successfully sent into space, it will begin a long and complex journey towards the chosen comet, named "Chermoyev-Grasimenko". The comet was chosen after it became clear that Rosetta would only be able to start its journey in 2004 instead of 2003, and therefore would not be able to "catch" the comet "Wiretanen", which the researchers were interested in first priority, because it could have been reached earlier. The Ariane 5 rocket is not as powerful as other rockets that launch satellites into space: its outstanding advantage lies in the fact that it is marketed by the Ariane Space company, which markets the European Space Agency's rockets.
Rosetta will make a particularly long trajectory within the solar system until it reaches the rendezvous point in about a decade. Among other things, the satellite will revolve around the sun, will use the gravity of Mars as a catapult to throw it to Earth - and will also use it as a catapult, to reach the desired speed. In November 2009, Rosetta will enter a direct orbit to the comet. After it becomes clear that the satellite is on the right path, the control personnel will instruct it to go into "hibernation" until it wakes up in 2014.
Towards May of that year, it will approach the nucleus of the comet to a distance that will vary between 2 and 50 km, fly alongside it, and use 11 different instruments to make measurements of the gases emitted from it.
Three months later, in August 2014, it will stabilize at a distance of only 25 km from the nucleus of the comet, which has an area of about 15 square kilometers, and the maneuver that has never been performed will begin: landing a special probe on the nucleus, which will perform more measurements.
"Until now they have photographed comets and at best approached them and captured the particles they emit. Landing on a comet is definitely a challenge," says Bar-Nun, who has been studying comets for 25 years. Bar-Nun refers, among other things, to the American Space Agency's "Stardust" satellite, which at the beginning of January of this year completed a journey of 3.32 billion kilometers in which it met the comet "Wilt-2".
Stardust entered the path of the comet, pulled out a special device that picked up the particles emitted by the comet and returned the device back to the satellite. It is now making its way back to Earth, where a special capsule containing the precious samples will land on January 15, 2006.
Link to the original BBC article
They knew the asteroids and comets
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