Rosetta Spacecraft With Philae Lander | 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko Comet

Rosetta Spacecraft

Rosetta Spacecraft
Rosetta Spacecraft | Image Credit: ESA


A many years ago a satellite named Rosetta sent to a sky in a night time. It was send to learn about history of our solar system. The philae is a lander of Rosetta. Rosetta and philae was launched on march 2 2004. It was performed a detailed to study of comet 67p/churyumov-gerasimenko.A comet is crossed our sky in a night time. Some people debated about it mysterious and other are says the earth was breathing. But nobody could say anything about it. In 1577 Tycho Brache a danish scientist says the comit are space rocks. It is coming far from space. Jatto named satellite was sent to study the halley's comet. It is a special comet Edmound halley said it comes to earth every 76 once years. In recently 1986 it comes again.the satellite named star delta satellite was sent to study about 81p/wild comet for research purpose.

Over view

Comets keep the secret of the early days of our solar system,By researching the cometary, you can find out how the planets formed on the earth.Rosetta and philae were ready to make an important event in history, but that journey could only be achieved after a long journey of about ten years. Rosetta needed a lot of energy to reach the comet, so the satellite orbited the Earth. The beautiful photo was taken while we were around. Rosetta and philae then went to where no spacecraft was going, and Rosetta photographed a diamond-shaped space rock named after it (Asteroid Steins 5/9/2008) Afterwards, an image appeared in the distance. Its name is Asteroid 21 lutetia. The spacecraft is about 100 kilometers height and 100 kilometers wide.

This is only the beginning, the distance to the comet has come down. When the Rosetta reaches the comet, Rosetta will research its surface and dust particles. With those research implications, scientists on Earth will investigate how comets work.Rosetta went close to the comet, but it also had a lot of risks. The comet looked so beautiful. Rosetta's most important work is the comet's orbit, and how the sun's heat varies with the sun's orbit. The comet looked like a duck and Rosetta approached it in early August (arrival at Comet 6/8/2014) Rosetta absorbs the air and dust particles surrounding it.

The philae meteorite was ready to land. So far no lander has landed on Comet Landing (12/11/2014) for a landing time of 8 hours, followed by two days of philae inspection. philae sent the results of its study to Rosetta. Rosetta discovered that the comet was 4 kilometers long and weighed 10 billion (1013). It was made by a smooth material, so it can floating. It discovered that the water vapor of the comet is different than the water vapor of the earth It found there were other winds. The dust was like rotten eggs.

Some dust was soft August (13/8/2015) In that day, the asteriod approached the Sun, analyzing the comet's tail being 10 million kilometers long.According to philae, its surface is solid and that it contains the chemicals needed for the organism, as well as the oxygen around the comet. Researchers believe that all these gases may have reached the rock surface about 4 1/2 million years ago Moreover, it was known that its interior was made of ice.Researchers believe these frosts may have formed when the planets are formed.


Philae  Lander
Philae  Lander
Rosetta was launched over ten years ago it's mission to chase down and plant a lander on comet. In order to save power it's was put into hibernation in nearly three years. No one has heard from it since the telescope's data is streamed live to the European space Agency's Mission control in darmstadt Germany.

The world's press has gathered here because at 10 a.m. Rosetta should wake up and begin the final phase of it's daring mission 30 years of planning 1.7 billion dollars of investment and the reputation of some of the world's most influential scientists and engineers hang in the balance professor mark Mcaren is one of the European space Agency's most senior scientific figures and champion  of the high-risk mission to an alien world if as if that doesn't wake up we just don't have a mission we can as well go home and just start working on something else if it  doesn't wake up today we don't have anything.

Dr.Matt Taylor project scientists he is in-charge of the scientific instruments on board Rosetta it is a really big day today i'm feeling apprehensive but also pretty confident that we're going to get rose at the back after 31 months of hibernation it was designed to do this but there's always's a little bit of apprehension when you're waiting Andrea a komatsu heads up rosetta's flight team he is ultimately responsible for getting Rosetta to the comet safely welcome this we've done all what we could to design a spacecraft to survive we're convinced the spacecraft can make it but technically speaking there are many things that can go wrong.

Rosetta last signal received back in June 2011 placed a 341 million miles from her using the data and drea and his team predicted Rosetta would have traveled another 450 million miles to an area near Jupiter's orbit this is where NASA'S telescopes now point but all they pick up are the background radio signals from that part of the sky.

Rosetta has been programmed to fire a radio pulse back to earth to verify that it is awake its signal should create a spike above the background noise finding Rosetta is a massive challenge the space craft is but a tiny speck in infinite space it's called no bigger than a family SUV it's solar panels shorter than the length of two articulated lorries but inside this tightly packed bundle is a marvel of an engineering an automated laboratory full of scientific requirement and cameras and at its center a lander the size of a washing machine called fili Rosetta is going to try a plant fillet are one of the most enigmatic objects in space.

Comet are primordial city sized boulders of ice and dust that roam the outer solar system beyond the planets but sometimes one of these distant comets gets knocked off-course and comes much closer to earth as they do so thew put on an incredible display these are the comets we see in the night sky.

Rosetta will follow one of the these icy travelers as it becomes active on its journey around the sun to get next to a comment and accompany this comet as it barrels in to the inner solar system that's difficult, so that's a first this is the first time we have ever deployed a lander on a comment.

We're going to scratch and sniff the surface to get a real idea of what the comet is made of Rosetta has go to be a 10 out of 10 in terms of challenges that we face among the missions I've ever benn involved in Rosetta presents a once in a life time opportunity  to answer some fundamental question's what are comets made of what can they tell us about how our solar system evolved and most importantly do they contain the essential ingredients of life comes are more or less unaltered since the birth of the solar system they've got water in  them dusting them maybe even complex organic molecules the origin of building blocks of life but before Rosetta can attempt to do all this first it has to wake up that should happen today it's been eight hours the team expected Rosetta to made contact by now but the radio telescope still detect nothing but background noise.

Nobody like this i burn ashen-faced we challenge it as much as possible we were extremely reluctant to ever made the spacecraft but in the end there was no other alternative putting Rosetta in to hibernation was a to risk but the team has no choice. In the run-up to Rosetta's launched a series of fatal flaws with the ariane space program grounded Rosetta the catastrophes delayed Rosetta's launched by over a year this meant Rosetta had no catching it's original target the search was on for a few comet it needed to be large enough to land on and pass close enough to the earth to reach it.

The scientist chose this one comet 67/p churyumov gerasimenko a gaint two and a half mile wide pristine relic left over from the birth of the solar system. But this comment had one major downside it was right on the limits of the distance Rosetta could travel to research it. Rosetta would have to go 500 million miles from the sun further than any other solar powered spacecraft had ever gone before at this distance it solar panels would no longer provide it with enough power Rosetta has some of the biggest solar panels ever put in to space but even those weren't big enough to operate the spacecraft safely.

when we were so far from the sun that the light intensity was only 4% of that  which we get at the earth faced with an impossible situation the team came up with bold plan to save power they would put Rosetta in to hibernation it would mean shutting down almost all of Rosetta's electronic systems including it gyro stabilizer the instrument that was keeping it pointing in the right direction one of the main things on board the spacecraft is the system that keeps it stable and that takes too much power so we had to turn that off but the problem with that immediately is  that the spacecraft might start drifting away from the sun and not get any power anymore with no power we can't run the critical heater's and we need heater's inside the spacecraft to keep thing like the fuel lines from freezing up because if they freeze up we lose the mission completely.

The engineers needed to find the solution that would keep Rosetta's solar panels face towards the sun while in hibernation, As you can see with a spinning top gear if you start spinning something it's stable it stays in the same orientation all the time so that's exactly what we decided to do with the spacecraft on the 8th of June 29011 the flight team gave the go-ahead to put Rosetta in to a lateral spin and then shut it down only today will they find out if that solution worked .

It;s 6:15 p.m. Still no sign from Rosetta, The world's press is hungry for answers but without contact with the Rosetta, The team is in dark what is the latest we are still receiving noise for the damping and any time to become the singular the delay could be because Rosetta's antenna is not pointing in the right direction.

After more than two year's of hibernation Rosetta might be pointing a funky direction so when the spinning stops it doesn't know where it is Rosetta has to work out where it is figure out where the earth is then point it antenna at awarded in order to  that it needs to open her electronic eyes star trackers a little cameras which point out at the sky and take pictures or the stars and compare those stars to catalogue she holds on board from that it can work out where it is.

Once It's locked on it can point herself and the high gain antenna at the earth and send that signal which where all waiting for to say I'm awake. At mission control there is news the gold stone telescope in California has detected a faint signal at Rosetta's specific frequency but in Australia Canberra has detected nothing at all then the signal disappears.

The signal returns is in what station center this time both telescopes pick it up. Every secrecy beautiful on the screen after nearly three years in hibernation Rosetta has come back. In ten months time Rosetta will attempt to land fillet on the Chilean off grassy mango surface once there it may able to answer one of science biggest mysteries could comets have helped seed the earth with the ingredients of life a countdown to the landing has begun. January the 21st 2014 Rosetta is travelling to the outer reaches of the solar system five million miles from comet churymov gerasimenko in the ten years since Rosetta's launched other space missions have transformed our understanding of comics.

A NASA probe called stardust was probably the most significant, In 2006 it returned to the earth with a precious cargo of  comet dust from the halo of a comet called built to but when scientists examined the samples they found that many of the dust grains had been damaged at the moment that stardust had caught.

UN like the dust  in my house which is like pebbles and really hard stuff that stardust coming off of the comet is what we all friable it's literally like a piece of parchment that when you when crumble it flies in to a million pieces. Dr.Claudia Alexander is Rosetta's project scientist heading up NASA'S team. In last ten year's NASA scientists have been able to examine a few hundred dust grains collected from the stardust mission and one of these grains revealed something extraordinary it contained an amino acid one of the essential ingredients of life. And amino acid Glycine was among the material that was captured that's very exciting this is the first time we've seen amino acids associated with Thomas.

Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins they are necessary for whole complex life. The human body has maybe 20 of them and they around and they produce the proteins that make our bodies what they are it is likely that the primordial earth was too hot for these delicate molecules to form. So for years scientists have wondered how these intricate molecules came about. Stardust's discovery raised the real possibility that comets may have helped seed the earth with amino acids.

3.8 billion years ago and set of the of events led to the world that we know today. If the team is able to land on the comet and drill down beneath its surface they may discover even more of these essential ingredients of life.

Would add weight to the theory that comet's may helped deliver building blocks of life to earth. But just getting Rosetta in to a position where he can learned fillet is a gargantuan task the comet is travelling about hundred thousand kilometers an hour that's a thousand times faster than the cannibal and you imagine trying to land on the cannibal that's our Challenge. The safest way to land on the comet is to fly alongside it at the same speed instead of  legolas comment whizzed past us we have to try and ride alongside it and then we'll deploy the lander on to the surface and everything we'll be fine.

When Rosetta launched it didn't have enough speed to travel straight towards the comet so it had to perform a series of special speed boosting maneuvers called gravity assists of slingshots the first was around the earth. Rosetta's  flying along in it orbit around the sun and the earth catches up from behind  and grabs a hold of  it with a gravity the earth's  powerful gravitational force caught hold of Rosetta and hold the craft out in to space just like a stone in a sling shot it flings Rosetta off at higher speed and on a new trajectory the earth sling shot accelerated Rosetta to 76,000 miles per hour.

The flight engineer's coordinated another three Rosetta sling shots twice more around the earth and around mars. Finally in 2011 Rosetta was on target to catch up with Julia Mafios  miniko. The first spacecraft ever to match a comet speed, Rosetta is now just 1.2 million miles from Chile amo flamenco. The flight team instructs Rosetta to lock onto the comet.

Rosetta's navigation cameras scan the heavens one tiny dot stands out. Rosett gas found its target churyumov-gerasimenko with in the common for the first time with the eyes of the pistol wiht the navigation cameras this is quite a moment the minister is a milestone in the mission from the distance churyumov-gerasimenko is nothing more than a blur. The scientists must take a closer
look they need to characterize the comet and spot potential hazards before Rosetta goes into orbit around it this is it main phase of the mission everyone's has great anticipation for.

What's comin Matt's team has a suite of 11 instruments with which to unlock multiple of  this mysterious ball of rock and ice the flight team require this information before they can rendezvous with the comet and search for a suitable landing site we have no idea what this body and even look like we have no idea what its shape is we have no idea  what its gravity is i don't know how we're going tot go into orbit without knowing those things in advance the scientists have just four months to establish curium of gerasimenko shape its mass and its gravity. But the data comes through captures something else the comet has become active it has transformed in to a violent erupting  mass of gas dust and ice.

This important discovery was made by Rosetta's main science camera. The coma has taken Rosetta scientists by surprise in the outer solar system a comet's surface should be completely frozen but as it moves towards the sun it heats up and an extraordinary transformation occurs.

Jesus few gases out of its surface sending dust and ice into space forming visible halo around the comet called a coma. the latest pictures show that this explosive activity has begun earlier than predicted sending Rosetta in to storm could be a huge challenge with great risk.

For Andrea and flight team this is a real cause for concern now that we are  approaching the comet we have to be extremely careful gases coming out of the comet travel with 600 to 800 meters per seconds are very fast Rosetta's exceptionally long solar panels giant sails basically the space car is blown away from it's position by the wind the comets gas jets currently stretch 800 miles into space but they are likely to get much bigger.

Last time comet churyumov-gerasimenko orbited the sun in 2009 its coma extended hundreds of thousands of miles the more we wait the close of the comet is to the sun the more active will be the more gases will come out of the comet and the more our orbit and the lander itself will be distributed it will be bigger earlier therefore we have to try and get things done quicker.

The flight team planned to intercept the comet before its geezers grow too strong by firing Rosetta's Thrusters over seven hours one of the longest continuous burns ever attempted by a spacecraft. They sent instruction to Rosetta, Rosetta confirms its rockets had ignited the  record burn pushes Rosetta into the comet's path they will rendezvous in three months time.

As Rosetta near the comet the flight team gets some good news to do moth Gracia Mancos geezer activity has reduced  the coma has died down to be honest with you comments are UN-predictable and they don't know exactly what's going on at the moment. But the comet disperses Rosetta scientific camera Osiris is able to disable the shape of comic to do more Gerasimenko snoopy's.

It's an astonishing discovery, News of the comets  bizarre shape attracts press attention from around the world they gather at Rosetta's mission control today, Rosetta will rendezvous with 67p/churyumov-gerasimenko. After travelling four billion miles the flight team are about to bring Rosetta in to orbit just 62 miles above the colony.

Rosetta's camera now has a front-row view of one of the wonders of the solar system. The comets are two massive heads are set three miles apart its neckline is wider than two Empire state building standing on top of each other, Object that clearly has potential to reveal ancient secrets we where at the threshold of learning which is a great place to be.

We've got boulders the size of  house we've got these massive cliff like structure this is an alien landscape and if you wanted to choose very landscape this comet has got absolutely everything that you could ever consider to be alien. Touchdown successfully the team need to find a safe landing spot, That the flight team required detailed images of the comets surface this is what Rosetta's $100,000,000 camera Osiris is designed to do the Osiris team is led by Holger CxI.

lets get going calibration to help them operate the osiris in space they have an exact replica here on earth kept in a level 6 clean room at the Max planck Institute in Germany despite the camera is high cost its resolution is relatively low by today's standards the number of megapixels they fly on Rosetta only four.

For ten years ago when Osiris was a built a 4 Megapixels camera was advanced Nowadays many mobile phone camera have a higher resolution. To get the level of detail int he images at the landing team need Rosetta flies to within 20 miles of the comets surface, At the distance a single mistake from the flight team could be catastrophic.

Over the coming days Osiris will take hundreds of detailed images in a bid of find a landing site on this jagged boulder ridden comment. Landing on a comet is different to landing on planet or a moon, The comets gravitational pull is a hundred thousand times less than the earth's, It's so weak that if you jumped off the surface of the comet you would fly into outer space the weak gravity means Rosetta can simply drop Philae a few miles above the comet.

The philae gets pushed out of the back of the Rosetta at a few centimeters a second less than william face and the very slight gravity if the comet will slowly pull through lay down onto the surface it takes hours but the weak gravity  presents a problem a touchdown so we're walking down to the surface of this comet and we land but it's not all over then because we'll bounce there's so little gravity on this comet that even what a walking pace you'll bounce off the surface and we'won't have succeeded so we've got to find a way of securing our self to the surface philae designers spaent year's developing unique system's to stop philae rebounding off the comet and flying back in to space.

The three legs act like shock absorbers cushioning the lander on impact. Each foot is fitted with an ice screw the energy soaked up by the shock absorbers power's the ice screws which will drill four inches in to the crust. These plans were drawn up over ten years ago at that time most astronomers believed that the comet surface was heard like but a recent NASA comet mission and data from Rosetta it self have revolutionized our understanding.

Some parts may be very ice like we can also have areas that are more and gravelly or even bound to very dusty material among est you consider the gravitational feel on the surface of the body itself  is quite low therefore this kind of feel that i have putting this material here would be totally different on the comet totally alien in that it'll be more like pudding a kind of gravel soup or gravel cloud more than anything where this stuff is loosely bound by gravity the dusty gravelly regions are not like anything we experienced on earth if philae lands in one of these regions then it's ice screws may not work luckily philae has a back up plan to copper berllium harpoons which should secure philae onto the surface with tough  Kevlar cord but these harpoons were also designed for ice.

Landing team leader dr. stefan olynyk wants to test the harpoons and granules of building insulation perhaps the nearest thing to the ethereal  gravel soup that can be produced in earth's gravity. It will be very interesting to learn if the anchor harpoon which is designed for ice for more solid material would also give us some anchoring force on this very granular very fluffy material the harpoons will be fired at a large wooden crates filled with this material the wost thing that could happen is of course that we pull out the harpoon when we want to tension to land up to the ground so it's interesting weather although it's so soft it gives enough Resistivity that we can really tighten the lander to the surface and this is part of TDT experiment we are doing right here.

Just like the harpoons on philae a point zero 1 ounce explosive propellant will detonate behind  the spike pushing it out of the chamber at a speed of 201 miles per hour. If the harpoons don't hold and the likelihood of philae securing itself on to the comet surface will be greatly reduced. The harpoon cord is pulled back to the force of 15 Newtons that's about the same force as it would take to pull a Venetian blind.

The harpoon isn't holding then dragged backwards by 4 inches it sticks, They removing our with the vacuum cleaner the dust so we see to have fun as it was when it actually anchor the reason for the harpoon success for 3 inch long Fuchs that splayed out as the harpoon was dragged back through the loose material adding these simple strips of metal to the harpoons design could save philae mission, But they'll only find out when they touchdown.

13th of september 2014 scientists from across the world congregate in Toulouse France to choose a landing site, This will not be an easy decision there's no smooth flat area on that comment they're boulder fields they're a crevasse is they look mountain ranges cliffs it's all there to make our life difficult. Rosetta's team has narrowed down the choice to five possible sites.

But three landing spots are ruled out by the team philae would have to pass through the comets jets to reach landing site A and that is too dangerous. Site B is littered with 329 boulders if feel a lands on a boulder it could tip over if that happened it could lose radio communication with Rosetta and philae mission would effectively be over landing site I is rejected because it has rough terrain they're down to the last two sites E is on the other side of the comet an area called the large head this landing zone may provide the best spot for most of the philae instruments what were the five sites we had seized by far the best but the flight team are concerned getting philae to this location is risky and the variable sunlight levels could cause problems for philae solar panels the flight team prefers the final landing option site J it's easier to reach although it's not perfect there are some cliffs and 93 boulders however some scientists continue to push for site C the good side is C very very surprised if not J was the nominal no no we discussed these two options going to see would be energetically bad because it includes a very long decent time in addition to points like the illumination angle is very bad in the end the team agree on the safest option.

So the board has decided psyched J's of my surprises to nominal one and  site C Asta Becca  for me there was no one brilliant landing site we had to choose one that was the least bad out of all them that's really what all i can say about that J is it's risky it may not work but We're gonna try our damnedest to make it work.

The risk may be high but so too are the rewards, If they manage to secure feel a onto the comets surface then it's suite of instruments can get to work. Rallis will photograph the surface concert will scan the comet's internal structure SD to a drill will mine pristine comet material from nine inches beneath the crust and then deliver a sample to one of the most important instruments of war a unique automated laboratory hidden inside philae shell called casa.

This could be a defining moment in science, The team hoped that kasich will find the special types of amino acids that are present types of amino acids that are present in all living things the  so called building blocks of life. If these special amino acids are present it will add weight to the theory that comets help deliver these ingredients to the earth 3.8 billion years ago Philae was spend months looking for them on the comets surface but first Rosetta I'm a successfuly land phiale.

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