European spacecraft begins 10-year quest to reach comet

DARMSTADT, Germany – A European spacecraft sped away from Earth’s gravity Tuesday after a flawless launch, beginning a 10-year journey to land on an icy comet in search of answers about the birth of the solar system and the origins of life on Earth.

The Rosetta craft blasted into orbit from Kourou, French Guiana, aboard an Ariane-5 rocket at 4:17 a.m. local time. Scientists then waited a tense two hours for the automated firing of the rocket’s upper stage, boosting the craft to the nearly 25,000 mph needed to escape Earth’s gravitational field.

European Space Agency controllers in Darmstadt then took command of the 3-ton craft – named for the Rosetta stone whose inscriptions provided the key to Egyptian hieroglyphs – and began bringing its systems to life, spreading its 105-foot solar panels and pointing them toward the sun to get electrical power.

Mission controllers toasted the launch, more than a year behind its original schedule, with champagne. ESA abandoned a January 2003 date after another rocket in the Ariane-5 family veered off course the previous month and had to be destroyed.

Rosetta’s destination – in 2014 – is a comet called 67P/Churymov- Gerasimenko, an irregular chunk of ice, frozen gases, and dust discovered in 1969 by Soviet astronomers Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko.

The voyage will take so long because Rosetta must loop three times past Earth and once past Mars to gain speed, using the planets’ gravitational fields as slingshots.

While Rosetta orbits the comet, its lander will attempt the difficult task of touching down, using a harpoon and spikes to grab hold. The comet has a diameter of three miles at most, and therefore its gravity is very weak.