{Collision with 67P, 720 million km away, marks final bid to gather closer than ever images of the ice-and-rock cluster.}<\/p>\n
The European Space Agency (ESA) has completed its Rosetta space probe mission with a landing on a comet 720 million km away, according to mission control.<\/p>\n
Rosetta collided with the comet 67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after more than 12 years in space, in a final effort to gather closer-than-ever pictures of the cluster of ice and rock.<\/p>\n
Mission controllers in the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, fell silent shortly before Friday’s touchdown, before breaking into jubilant applause as the mission was confirmed over.<\/p>\n
There were tears, hugs and cheers at mission control when Sylvain Lodiot, spacecraft operations manager, announced: “This is the end of the Rosetta mission.”<\/p>\n
Speaking to Al Jazeera from the command centre in Germany, Detlef Koschny, one of the scientists leading the mission, said: “When we touched the surface, I have to admit, I had tears in my eyes.<\/p>\n
“I spent 22 years on this mission and it was a very special moment.”<\/p>\n
Comets are thought to contain primordial material from the planetary system’s birth, preserved in a dark-space deep freeze.<\/p>\n
“The mission was to go to a comet, a comet that was formed during the formation of our solar system,” Koschny said.<\/p>\n
“So we went there to learn how our own solar system formed, how the Earth formed and how life came on Earth.<\/p>\n
{{Rocky, cold surface}}<\/p>\n
Rosetta had been programmed to touch down at a human walking pace of about 90cm per second, after a 14-hour free fall from an altitude of 19km.<\/p>\n
It joined long-spent robot probe Philae on the galactic wanderer’s rocky, cold surface for long journey around the Sun.<\/p>\n
Confirmation of the mission’s end came at 11:19 GMT, when the Rosetta’s signal – with a 40-minute delay – disappeared from ground controllers’ computer screens.<\/p>\n
Mission scientists had expected Rosetta would bounce and tumble about before settling, but its final moments will forever remain a mystery as it was instructed to switch off on first impact.<\/p>\n
In its final hours, Rosetta sent home data gathered from nearer the comet than ever before, tasting the comet’s gas, dust and plasma, and taking close-up pictures of the spot that is now its icy tomb.<\/p>\n
Rosetta and lander probe Philae had travelled more than six billion km over 10 years to reach 67P in August 2014 .<\/p>\n
A social media campaign and cartoon depicting the pair as intrepid space explorers, each with its “own” Twitter account, earned the mission a global following.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the cartoon was updated with a dusty and bashed-up Rosetta lying eyes closed on the comet surface, as Earth held a placard proclaiming “Goodbye Rosetta”.<\/p>\n
“#Rosetta, is that you?” ESA said on Twitter on Philae’s behalf.<\/p>\n
Philae was sent to the comet surface in November 2014 , bouncing several times, then gathering 60 hours of on-site data which it sent home before entering standby mode.<\/p>\n
Rosetta stuck with the comet, hoping to spot Philae, which it finally did in September this year.<\/p>\n
But the spaceship started running low on energy as the comet looped out on its near-seven-year orbit, further and further away from the Sun’s rays.<\/p>\n
Instead of letting Rosetta fade away, scientists opted to end the mission on a high by taking comet measurements from up close – too close to risk under usual operating conditions.<\/p>\n
Insights gleaned from the $1.5bn project have shown that comets crashing into an early Earth may well have brought amino acids, the building blocks of life.<\/p>\n
Comets of 67P’s type, however, certainly did not bring water, scientists have concluded.<\/p>\n
“Rosetta has blown it all open. It’s made us have to change our ideas of what comets are, where they came from and … how the solar system formed and how we got to where we are today,” said Matt Taylor, a scientist with the Rosetta mission.<\/p>\n
“We have only just scratched the surface. We have decades of work to do. The spacecraft may end but the science will continue.”<\/p>\n
For flight operators, the separation was more difficult.<\/p>\n
“They [scientists] still have the data to analyse but we don’t have the spacecraft any more,” said Lodiot, who had been involved in the project for 12 years.<\/p>\n
Comets are thought to contain the oldest, largely unchanged, matter from the birth of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.<\/p>\n
Koschny, who is an expert in comets and astroids at the ESA, told Al Jazeera: “What we can say now is that the mission has been a big success.<\/p>\n
“I mean science analysis is only starting now. We will be able to answer some of the question we have always been asking.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Collision with 67P, 720 million km away, marks final bid to gather closer than ever images of the ice-and-rock cluster.} The European Space Agency (ESA) has completed its Rosetta space probe mission with a landing on a comet 720 million km away, according to mission control. Rosetta collided with the comet 67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-29066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29066"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=29066"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=29066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}