After more than ten years of hard work, the leaders of the Rosetta mission are finally celebrating their success. Having flown three times around the Earth, once around Mars and made a giant detour beyond the orbit of Jupiter, "Rosetta" and its landing module "Philae" overtook the comet, studied it from afar, and now "Philae" descended to the surface of Churyumov-Gerasimenko - a comet the same age as the solar system.
In 2004, when the spacecraft were just launched from Earth, no one particularly believed in the success of this mission, it seemed so ambitious. Researchers compared it to the Deep Impact project of the American agency NASA - a mission in which the device remotely detonated the comet Tempel-1 for scientific purposes, and ordinary people argued that landing on the comet was even more difficult than on the killer asteroid from the movie "Armageddon".
Nevertheless, the scientists of the European Space Agency, who have been leading the Rosetta mission all these years, did not listen to the pessimists and decided by all means to bring their project to completion. Almost like in a movie, the climax of the mission with all its difficulties came towards the end of the "scenario": most of the course of the mission proceeded strictly in accordance with the plans.
Klim Ivanovich Churyumov, a Soviet and Ukrainian astronomer and children's writer, discoverer of comets Churyumov-Gerasimenko and Churyumov-Solodovnikov, proudly watched the landing of the probe.
The discoverer of the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Klim Churyumov said that the landing of the probe on the core of a celestial body is the most important event for the development of human civilization. TASS reports. According to the scientist, a comet is a time capsule that preserves primary matter.
Promotional video:
Although it was possible to worry at many stages. After the launch, Rosetta made maneuvers in the solar system for seven years under the guidance of scientists, and in 2011 the device was taken as far as possible from the Sun - 800 million kilometers. At this point, "Rosetta" was put into sleep mode in order to save energy, both the probe itself and the leaders of the mission. And she slept like this for two whole years.
Then, on January 21, 2014, an exciting moment came: Rosetta began to wake up from sleep mode and prepare for the final major maneuver to approach the comet. Of course, scientists were worried that for so many years of unrelenting sleep, the apparatus could fail some of the systems, but the test showed that the Rosetta is functioning normally and can continue its mission.
Observations of Churyumov-Gerasimenko were also perfect. Scientists have remotely collected a mass of data on the celestial body that was formed at the time of the birth of the solar system, and are already engaged in their analysis.
Difficulties arose at the final stage, when the Phila lander undocked from the Rosetta. The module all this time (even after the scientists woke up the Rosetta) was in sleep mode, since there was no need for its activity. But when it was turned on, it turned out that the active descent system of the vehicle was faulty. That is, the researchers will have to rely solely on the harpoon system, which will keep the apparatus on the surface of the comet, playing the role of gravity, which is too low on Churyumov-Gerasimenko.)
Fortunately, it turned out that the harpoon was quite enough: exactly as planned, on November 12, 2014 at 16:02 GMT (at 19:02 Moscow time), the Philae lander touched the surface of the comet and began its research mission. During the seven hours that the module descended, he managed to take several close-up photographs of the Rosetta, and the Rosetta photographed the mechanical pioneer.
The success now being celebrated by mission leaders at the European Space Agency's Darmstadt office is only an intermediate piece of an ambitious project. As samples are collected and immediately analyzed, scientists plan to find out if comets can be the spreaders of the seeds of life on planets, if they contain water and in general, what is the composition and what is the history of the solar system's peers.
When the mission was just conceived, scientists said that drilling a comet is like drinking from the Holy Grail or opening a Pandora's box, learning the secrets of the universe without even flying out of the Earth. Researchers are one step closer to uncovering these secrets.