|
THE FIRST
SPACECRAFT TO LAND ON A COMET
|
|
| Comets are often spectacular
objects, but their heart - the nucleus - is a tiny irregular chunk of
mixed-up rock and ice ("dirty snowball"), often only a few km across.
If a comet approaches the Sun, the surface of its nucleus heats up,
ices evaporate, and the released gases and dust form the coma (the
comet's atmosphere).
|
|
 |
Comets preserve information from the time of formation of
our solar system, 4.5 billion years ago. Landing on a comet therefore
is seen as a major scientific milestone to improve our understanding of
the origin of the Sun, the planets including Earth, and probably even
the origin of life. Besides it is an unique technological challenge.
|
|
So far, space probes only made fly-bys
of comet nuclei:
Vega, Giotto, Deep Space 1, to name the most prominent. The Rosetta Mission will fly to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, orbit it and release the ROSETTA LANDER, which will be the first spacecraft to perform a soft landing on a comet's nucleus, where it will operate for weeks and months to take images, sample the comet soil, its atmosphere and the changes it undergoes as the nucleus approaches the Sun. |
 |
