Rosetta Spacecraft Begins Voyage to Comet  

Europe's Rosetta space mission, which aims to chase and then land on a comet in search of secrets of the history of the solar system, has begun its ten year voyage after the spacecraft separated from an Ariane rocket early Tuesday. The rocket departed from the European Space Agency's (ESA) launch center in Kourou, French Guiana on the northeast coast of South America at 4:17 a.m. local time (2:17 a.m. EST) on the first stage of the mission's 4.34 billion-mile, 10-year journey to reach the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The Ariane-5 rocket lit up the partly cloudy equatorial night sky and was visible from the ground for over a minute. Two launch attempts last week were canceled on account of bad weather and technical problems. At 6:33 a.m. (4:33 a.m. EST), over two hours after launch, ground controllers said Rosetta separated from the Ariane rocket beginning its trip for an attempted comet rendezvous slated for 2014.

So, why make the long journey to outer space? Scientists believe comets may contain chemical and physical records from the time the solar system was formed some 4.6 billion years ago. The Rosetta mission will attempt to unlock secrets of how life began on earth -- and perhaps even elsewhere in the universe. "We're doing something really basic. We're going back to the beginning of time," David Southwood, ESA's head of science programs said before the launch. "We are trying to look at the material from which our solar system was made." 

No existing rocket is powerful enough to send the spacecraft directly to its destination so Rosetta will swing around Mars and the Earth several times, picking up momentum like a slingshot before breaking free and hurtling off. In mid-2014, the spacecraft will enter the comet's orbit, brake and eventually drop a lander on to its nucleus. "Once we've launched Rosetta from the Ariane-5 launch vehicle we have to try and get the spacecraft out into the same orbit as the comet," said John Ellwood, Rosetta mission director. "This is not such an easy thing to do. In order to get the energy to do that we actually have to fly by the planets. We fly by Earth three times, we fly by Mars once. Each time we go around one of these planets we get more and more energy."

The mission, named after the stone that helped archaeologists decrypt Egyptian hieroglyphics, is slated to end in December 2015. Rosetta was initially scheduled to have been launched in early 2003. But the $1.2 billion mission was postponed after an upgraded version of Ariane-5 failed on its maiden flight in December 2002. Because of the delay the initial target, the comet Wirtanen, became out of reach for the mission and was replaced with Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rosetta was built by an industrial consortium led by Europe's EADS. The United States led the comet-chasing race with its Stardust spacecraft that gathered particles from a comet's tail and took pictures of its nucleus, but Rosetta's lander would be the first to touch the nucleus itself.

FMI: www.esa.int