Thu, Mar 04, 2004
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.
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