Rendezvous
with Rosetta’s historic Comet mission
As Rosetta’s countdown to comet landing had
begun, the students of WIS Pawan Baug embarked on a wonderful journey to Nehru
Science Center, where NSC along with the European Space Agency had arranged an
interactive session for students to learn about this extraordinary achievement
in space history. Who could have ever thought that one day we could land on a
comet?
The session was conducted by Astronomer and
Curator of NSC, Saket Singh Kaurav in collaboration with European Space Agency.
Wittians attended a Popular Science Lecture
& film screening on the International mission at the Centre.
The students learnt that the spaceship Rosetta left Earth in 2004 and
has been chasing 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for the last decade. In August it
finally caught up with the speeding comet and has spent the last few months
studying the lump of rock and looking for a suitable landing spot.
Students were aware that on 12th
November, Rosetta will release a landing probe – called Philae – which will
drop down to the surface. It will be the first time a soft landing has ever
been attempted. Comets are the primitive building blocks of the Solar System,
left over from a planet-building time when our Sun was just a spinning disc of
dust and gas. Made of ice, dust and small rocky particles, it is likely they
delivered the first water to Earth and may have even seeded the planet with the
building blocks for life. The comet is currently hurtling through space at
24,600 miles per hour and its nucleus is only 2.5 miles wide. Scientists
compare the task to a fly trying to land on a speeding bullet.
And the surface is a jumble of cliffs,
boulders and steep slopes. If Philae is released when Rosetta is just 1cm out
of alignment it could fall hundreds of metres away from the chosen landing
spot. Rosetta has already been travelling for more than a decade after the
craft was launched on March 2 2004, from Kourou, French Guiana. But the comet
is moving far faster than speeds which could ever be achieved by a space ship
leaving Earth. So the craft has spent the time since, using the gravitational
pull of the Earth and Mars to act as a sling shot and allow it to pick up
acceleration.
When it reached the crucial speed in July
2011 the spacecraft was put into deep-space hibernation for the coldest, most
distant leg of the journey as it travelled some 497 million miles from the Sun,
close to the orbit of Jupiter as the comet headed into outer Solar System. It
was woken up in January for the final leg of its journey. Philae, is around 35
cubic feet in size and is named after an island on the river Nile, where an
obelisk was found there containing an inscription which played an important
role in deciphering the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta stone. The lander will
send back a panorama of its surroundings and high-resolution pictures of the
surface and will perform analysis of the composition of the ices and organic
material.
Students understood that a drill will take
samples from 8-11 inches below the surface, feeding them to Philae’s laboratory
for analysis. Rosetta will then stay alongside the comet as it moves closer to
the Sun. Instruments on board will analyse the gases of the tail; probe the comets
interior; measure dust grains and study its atmosphere and gravity.
After a nail biting wait where we have been
following the live feeds from ESA, the Wittians are also thrilled to report
that the lander Philae was confirmed to touch down on the surface of the comet
more than 300 million miles away at 11:05 a.m. Eastern. This is indeed a moment
of triumph for the human race.
THANKS & REGARDS
WITTY INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL
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