Rosetta is a space robotics project built and launched by the European Space Agency (ESA). With the help of Philae, its lander module, Rosetta is performing a detailed study of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, where is taking as much as possible information. It has also done a flyby of the planet Mars and asteroids 21 Lutetia and 2867 Šteins before the rendezvous on 67P.
The spacecraft consists of the Rosetta orbiter, which is made up of 12 instruments, and also the Philae lander, with another nine additional instruments, which are the ones that collect the data from the comet. The Rosetta mission will orbit 67P for 17 months, at this day the spacecraft have been 202 days in orbit with it. And also is pretty far away from the earth, just behind Mars.
Rosetta was launched on 2 March 2004 on an Ariane 5 rocket and reached the comet on 6 August 2014, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit a comet, and the one that is suppose to collect more data from it than any before.
On 12 November 2014 the mission performed the first soft landing on a comet and returned data from the surface.
We will get through a detailed explaination of Philae and news about Rosetta Mission will be also posted.
Here's one of the last images that we currently have of Rosetta.
- Image obtained on 18 February from a distance of 198 km
© ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
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