2014-11-19 14:07
Last Wednesday, after a seven-approaching for landing Rosetta mission control team on behalf of ESA softly posadowił Philae to the surface of comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko. ESA claims that the landing succeeded against all odds. Philae twice rebounded after the first touchdown on a comet to finally stop in the shade of a cliff in the late afternoon.
of foundation Philae fulfilled its primary mission to upload all data ,, own operations’ and scientific data from instruments between other Rolis, COSAC, Ptolemy, SD2 and CONSERT.
In addition, the lander body was raised to about 4 cm and rotated by about 35 ° in an effort to issue a larger area panels to sunlight. With the recent transfer of scientific data on Earth, the energy supply was quickly exhausted Philae, which had lost contact with the Rosetta lander early in the morning on Saturday. Philae landing site is shaded, which means that the lander is not able to obtain solar energy to charge the battery. From then contact the Philae will be prevented unless the sunlight reaching the panels will be sufficient to generate power capable to wake him.
However, before collapsing in a dream lander sent an unprecedented pictures of your surroundings. ESA announces: ,, While the pictures of the landing approach can be seen the comet surface covered with dust and rubble of a millimeter in diameter after the meter, panoramic images show layered walls looking for harder material. Research teams now analyze their data to see if the samples were taken of any of these materials during drilling of Philae. “
Although Philae fell now in hibernation, the ESA team is expecting much more after pioneering the lander. Stephan Ulamec, manager of the lander on behalf of the German Space Agency DLR noted: ,, I still hope that at a later stage of the mission, maybe when we get closer to the Sun, we will have sufficient intensity of sunlight to wake the lander and re-establish communication. “
The Rosetta probe was launched 2 March 2004. and 6.4 billion kilometers defeated in the solar system before – the first spacecraft – arrived on August 6, 2014. comet. Now, as the first probe supplied to the surface of a comet. Alvaro Giménez, Director. Science and Exploration ESA unmanned said: ,, Decade preparation paved the way for today’s success, providing a probe Rosetta unchanging status of a turning point in the study of comets and space exploration. “
Although the Philae near future is to remain dormant, Rosetta will be extremely active. In the coming months, Rosetta will begin flights to more distant ,, open “orbits, carrying out a series of daring, close air by a comet, some 8 km from its center.
The ESA says that data collected by the orbiter will allow scientists to look at the short- and long-term changes that occur on a comet, which will help to answer some of the most serious and the most important questions regarding the history of our solar system.
For more information:
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta
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