The world watched in wonder last November as the Philae spacecraft shot anchoring harpoons out of its base and attached itself to the Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet.
This moment was the culmination of a 10-year voyage Philae took aboard the Rosetta space probe. Its successful landing was a moment of triumph for the people controlling Rosetta from earth.
European Space Agency senior science adviser, Mark McCaughrean, and head of missions operations, Dr Paolo Ferri, are in Australia to give talks about the Rosetta mission in New Norcia, WA and Canberra.
Mr McCaughrean told SBS the mission statement of Rosetta when it launched in 2004 was to "catch a comet" with an aim to "investigate the origins of water on the earth and life on the earth".
"One comet on its own isn't going to tell us everything as there are millions out there," he said. "But by getting close-up to one and studying it in great detail... we can hope to use that, if you like, as a key to unlocking the treasure chest of all the information that's buried in all of the comets in our solar system," Mr McCaughrean said.
As the probe is roughly 500 million kilometres away, the-day-to-day logistics of managing its activity are significant. The ESA communicate with the probe by sending it software commands via a radio signal, often from the New Norcia Station.
"We control [it] remotely by sending it software commands, we can apply thrusters to move around the comet, we can turn instruments on and off," Mr McCaughrean said.
"One comet on its own isn't going to tell us everything as there are millions out there."
"None of it's in real time, it happens with about a half-hour delay because the probe's so far away from us - there's a huge amount of planning work that has to happen to fly around an object like this, because it's a really weird object, it's like a planet where the gravity's really dependable."
This year will see the end of the nominal phase of Rosetta's mission, but barring issues with the probe the mission is likely to continue into 2016.
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