(Transcript from World News Radio)
After a decade-long journey across the solar system, a European spacecraft is nearing its historic goal of placing a robotic lander on a comet.
The icy comet is more than 400 million kilometres away from Earth.
Santilla Chingaipe has the details.
(Click on audio tab above to listen to this item)
If the space probe known as Rosetta could have flown direct to its target, it might have seemed relatively easy.
But instead, it has required 10 years, six billion kilometres and three gravitational pushes from Earth and one from Mars for Rosetta to catch up with Comet 67-P, which loops around the Sun at up to 135-thousand kilometres per hour.
Mission controllers in Germany were nervously preparing for the crucial thruster burn that sucessfully set Rosetta in orbit around the 3-point-2 kilometre-wide object.
And they were made to to wait for 22 agonising minutes to receive a signal back, to learn if it was successful.
Until finally ....
" (sfx applause ... "we're at the comet! Yes!" applause "
Rosetta was placed in hibernation in June 2011 to save power, because it was so far from the Sun that light was too dim to use its solar panels.
Rosetta's onboard computer was programmed to give a wake up in January, so it could continue its mission to 67-P.
Scientists sucessfully woke Rosetta up and it began its final leg of the rendezvous with 67-P.
"It's about half a year ago that we gathered in this place to witness the so-called 'awakening' of Rosetta after more than two and a half years of hibernation, Rosetta our European comet chaser. Travelling about 10 years through our Solar System, Rosetta got ready to prepare to rendezvous with Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P). And today, Rosetta has reached its destination."
Comets have been associated in many cultures around the world with the arrival of misfortune or bad news.
So why are astrophysicists so excited about reaching this comet?
According to researchers at the European Space Agency, understanding comets can unlock some of life's biggest questions.
"The really big questions here are where do we come from? Where does the Solar System we live in come from? How was it put together? How was it assembled and then how did the planets get built up individually and how did water get to this planet which we live on? And maybe even the complex questions of the complex molecules, the molecules that build us up, water and life - these are questions that motivate everybody. Rosetta is indeed the Rosetta Stone as a mission. It will unlock this treasure chest as a clue to all comets. Many comets in our solar system, there are trillions out there - but this is the baseline. This is the one that we can study in such detail we can rewrite history and begin to understand our won history and I think that's a great thing for us."
Rosetta has been updating people around the globe via social media as it continues on its voyage.
And it let the world know it had arrived at 67-P by simply tweeting ...
'Hello, Comet!'.
Rosetta is carrying a robotic landing device called Philae.
And in November, scientists hope to send Philae down to the surface to make the first-ever landing on a comet.
If all goes well, Philae will then start transmitting images and data back to Earth.
The mission is due to end next year.
Share
