Probe should first bring minilab on Comets - Spiegel Online

Darmstadt – With a spectacular mission to make the European Space Agency ESA on the way to the beginnings of the solar system. The space probe “Rosetta” to Engage in August 2014 as the first spacecraft in orbit around a comet and a few weeks later settle the lander “Philae” on it. The maneuver is planned for November 2014 – by Esa-information an unprecedented action in the history of space flight

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“This has not been done before us,” said the head of mission operations, Paolo Ferri, on Tuesday in the satellite control center in Darmstadt. Comets should contain primordial matter from the beginning of the solar system 4.6 billion years. The mission should also provide information about whether comets brought water and life on the earth.

mission planners the European Space Agency ESA have for “Rosetta” on 2 March 2004 with a “Ariane 5 -” rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou is started, given a scientifically highly productive ten-year itinerary. If all goes well, the comet will be until the end of the mission about 7.1 billion kilometers have traveled through the solar system – three times on the Earth and one of Mars and the asteroid Steins (2008) and Lutetia (2010) by Looking for the original matter

penetrated on her journey so far “Rosetta” up to 800 million kilometers from the Sun to the outer solar system before – close to the orbit of Jupiter – in order to reach the target comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and him finally to on the way to accompany the sun.

Since 8 June 2011 is “Rosetta” in an energy-saving deep sleep phase. Your alarm clock is on the 20th January 2014, 11 clock CET, asked, now declared an ESA spokesman. Then the probe is to their navigation instruments to warm up and align the main antenna to Earth to come into contact with the Esa-control center in Darmstadt. The staff there are not entirely free from worry, after all, was “Rosetta” for ten years in the depths of the universe go.

At the time the alarm call will be “Rosetta” nine million miles away from the target comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. If all eleven instruments of the probe still work, they can continue their journey. End of May, then a larger course correction maneuver on the program that is to bring the probe finally on track.

swinging into an orbit around the comet is scheduled for August 2014. To be completed successfully, the “Rosetta” mission with the planned for November 2014 landing of “Philae” on the comet – a place that will accommodate 4.64 billion years old primordial matter from the beginning of the solar system. Failing that maneuver, the exotic comet material with ten different instruments can be examined in detail.

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