The European Space comet-chaser probe, Rosetta, launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) based in Darmstadt Germany, has made a successful and very mission-crucial fly-by of the planet Mars, prompting applause and feelings of relief amongst the ESA officials.
Rosetta made a close flyby of Mars on Sunday, a crucial maneuver in its slow 10-year voyage through the solar system to make the first soft landing on a comet. The flyby maneuver, which used the planet’s gravity to change course and required that Rosetta shut off many of the spacecraft’s instruments in order to put its batteries into use during its passing on the shadow side of the Red Planet, was observed with anticipated breath.
During the maneuver, Rosetta comet probe’s radio signal fell silent for 15 minutes as the craft passed behind the Red Planet, lost radio signals and solar power and geared into her batteries whilst shutting down all equipment. As she flew from the shadow into a Martian sunrise at 3:40 a.m. Sunday and regained solar power and a radio signal, applause broke out in the European Space Agency. According to Manfred Warhaut, head of mission operations: “Rosetta is on its way”. Rosetta came as close as 155 miles to Mars surface during the applauded maneuver.
The successful flyby “is fundamental to the mission,” said spacecraft operations manager Andrea Accomazzo. “If we don’t do this, we don’t have a mission.”
Rosetta is scheduled to orbit the comet 67/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014 as it hurtles around the sun and to release a small but very complex lander that will make the first touchdown on the comet. The lander will seek to drill into the surface and radio back an analysis of the comet’s surface and nucleus makeup. The lander is a sort of miniature chemical laboratory packed with sophisticated instruments. The Rosetta probe will then chase the comet for one year and observe its nucleus as it continues on its trip towards the inner Solar System at a speed of 135,000 km per hour.The 3-mile long comet, an irregular chunk of ice, frozen gases and dust, is named for its discoverers, Soviet astronomers Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko.
Rosetta’s Mars Maneuver is the second of four so-called ‘gravitational assisted manoeuvres’ that the craft will complete before reaching its ambitious target in 2014.
The one-week delayed £600 million mission to land a spacecraft on a comet finally took off safely at the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana two years ago in March 2004. The Rosetta probe and comet-chaser, was mostly built by EADS Astrium in Stevenage and her epic voyage was launched by an Ariane 5 rocket.