Europe's Rosetta Probe Crash Lands Into Comet

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Europe's Rosetta Probe Crash Lands Into Comet

Post by Riddick » 10-01-2016 01:00 AM

Colliding with 67P, the European Space Agency's spacecraft's mission-ending event marks the final bid to gather closer than ever images of the ice-and-rock cluster and make some ultra-close measurements. 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.

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. 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 impact.

A social media campaign and cartoon depicting the Rosetta and lander probe Philae pair as intrepid space explorers, each with its "own" Twitter account, earned the mission a global following. 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".

"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.

Comets are thought to contain the oldest, largely unchanged, matter from the birth of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.

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