Rosetta Encounters Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko: Towards the end of the first week of August, 2014 a historic spacecraft will arrive at a comet named 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (named after the astronomers Klim Ivanovich Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko at the Alma-Ata Astrophysical Institute (Kazakhstan) on September 11, 1969). Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has an orbital period of 6.45 years. The comet is currently approximately 3.7 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun and 2.7 AU from the Earth. This spacecraft is named Rosetta after the ancient Egyptian stone containing Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics and Greek that allowed historians to decipher the Ancient Egyptian language. Rosetta (along with the lander Philae) was developed and launched (March 2, 2004) by the European Space Agency (ESA). Rosetta required four planetary flybys (three using the Earth (March 4, 2007/November 13, 2007/November 13, 2009) and one with Mars (February 25, 2007) in order to accelerate the spacecraft to a suffcient velocity to reach Comet 67/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rosetta will be the first spacecraft to orbit a comet and follow a comet as it heads towards the inner solar system. It will also be the first to deploy a lander (named Philae) upon the surface of the comet on November 11, 2014. The Rosetta spacecraft contains ten instruments that will hopefully discover fascinating details about comets and the early solar system. Recent images obtained by the Rosetta spacecraft as it approaches the comet shows it to be a contact binary (two lobes in contact and orbiting as a single object). This will make the Philae landing in November, 2014 more difficult. I have produced a space art scene (spacecraft image courtesy of ESA) of what the Rosetta spacecraft may encounter as it reaches Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on August 6, 2014. The comets surface may be active and therefore we see the coma surrounding it and jets erupting on its surface. It should be very exciting to follow the images obtained by Rosetta and Philae in the future. I hope that you all like it.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 13:57:00 +0000
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