Having officially entered its second year of operations last week, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft is set to begin an extended mission in December before controllers send it on a controlled decent that will reunite it with its Philae lander on the surface of Comet 67P.
According to Spaceflight Now and Sky & Telescope, the history-making probe has enough fuel and funding to continue studying the comet through September 2016, at which point it will begin a slow descent that will eventually culminate with a “controlled crash landing” on the comet.
At one point, the notion of placing Rosetta in hibernation while 67P neared aphelion (the point at which it would be furthest from the sun), then waking it up again once the comet approached the sun again four years later, had been suggested. The ESA ultimately decided against this proposal, however, fearing that the spacecraft would not survive the extended period of downtime.
“Rosetta will, next year, continue the current wealth of scientific data from C/67P,” ESA Rosetta mission manager Patrick Martin said, according to Sky & Telescope, “and, in particular since the comet passed perihelion, will follow the comet’s activity to its complete end.”
Planning for the historic spacecraft’s final moments
Following a decade-long journey, Rosetta arrived at Comet 67P’s location in August 2014, and on November 12, its Philae probe touched-down on the comet’s surface. 67P’s orbit took Rosetta and Philae to perihelion—the point during which time it was closest to the sun—on August 13, and at one point the spacecraft was just five miles (eight kilometers) from the nucleus.
As of Thursday, Rosetta was 105 miles (170 km) from the comet’s nucleus, but according to the ESA, it will move much closer in the weeks to come, and it is their hope that it will continue to collect data right up until the moment when it makes contact with the comet and shuts down.
“We are looking forward to the scientific discoveries the next year will bring,” Rosetta project scientist Matt Taylor said in a statement. “Next year, we plan to do another far excursion, this time through the comet’s tail and out to 2000 km. To complement that, we hope to make some very close flybys towards the end of the mission, as we prepare to put the orbiter down on the comet.”
Specifics of Rosetta’s grand finale are still being worked out, as the procedure is every bit as complex and the delivery of Philae, if not more so operations manager Sylvain Lodiot explained. Currently, the plan is to move the probe into a series of highly elliptical orbits in August, then move out to a more distant point for Rosetta’s final approach in September.
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Feature Image: ESA/ATG medialab/Rosetta/NAVCAM
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