Rosetta’s nominal mission was originally funded until the end of this year, but at a meeting yesterday, the European Space Agency has given formal approval to continue the mission for an additional 9 months, until the end of September 2016. The spacecraft will most likely be landed on the surface of its target comet.
This false-color image of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was taken by the Rosetta navigation camera on 15 June 2015 from a distance of 207 km from the comet center. Image credit: ESA / Rosetta / NAVCAM / CC BY-SA IGO 3.0.
“This is fantastic news for science. We will be able to monitor the decline in the comet’s activity as we move away from the Sun again, and we will have the opportunity to fly closer to the comet to continue collecting more unique data,” said Dr Matt Taylor, a scientist for ESA’s Rosetta project.
“By comparing detailed before and after data, we will have a much better understanding of how comets evolve during their lifetimes.”
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will make its closest approach to the Sun on 13 August, 2015 and the spacecraft has been watching its activity increase over the last year.
Continuing its study of the comet in the year following perihelion will give ESA scientists a fuller picture of how a comet’s activity waxes and wanes along its orbit.
During the extended mission, the scientists will use the experience gained in operating Rosetta in the challenging environment to carry out some new and potentially slightly riskier investigations, including flights across the night-side of the comet to observe the plasma, dust, and gas interactions in this region, and to collect dust samples ejected close to the nucleus.
As the comet recedes from the Sun, Rosetta will no longer receive enough sunlight to operate efficiently.
In addition, the orbiter and its target comet will again be close to the Sun as seen from our planet in October 2016, making operations difficult by then.
“This time, as we are riding along next to the comet, the most logical way to end the mission is to set Rosetta down on the surface,” explained Dr Patrick Martin, a manager for ESA’s Rosetta project.
“But there is still a lot to do to confirm that this end-of-mission scenario is possible. We will first have to see what the status of the spacecraft is after perihelion and how well it is performing close to the comet, and later we will have to try and determine where on the surface we can have a touchdown.”
If this proposed scenario were played out, then Rosetta would be commanded to spiral down to 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko over a period of about three months.
Rosetta is a mission to chase, go into orbit around, and land on a comet. It is studying the Jupiter-family comet with a combination of remote sensing and in situ measurements.
The probe arrived at 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 6 August 2014 following a ten-year journey through the Solar System.
Between August and November 2014, Rosetta orbited the comet and gathered data to characterize the environment and the comet nucleus. On 12 November 2014, the Philae lander was deployed to the surface.
Philae shut down on 15 November 2014 after completing its main operations sequence on the comet when the primary battery expired as expected after about 60 hours. On the evening of 13 June 2015, the lander came out of hibernation.
