Rosetta spacecraft ends epic mission with comet landing

By Hajer M’tiri

PARIS

The Rosetta spacecraft’s epic 12-year mission to rendezvous with a comet ended Friday with a controlled landing to the surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Mission scientists said the probe’s demise would also be the start of years of analysis which could lead to discoveries for decades to come.

Confirmation of the end of the mission arrived at the European Space Agency’s control center in Darmstadt, Germany at 1.19 p.m. local time (1119 GMT) with the loss of Rosetta’s signal upon impact with the comet.

“Rosetta has entered the history books once again,” said Johann-Dietrich Worner, ESA’s Director General. “Today we celebrate the success of a game-changing mission, one that has surpassed all our dreams and expectations and one that continues ESA’s legacy of ‘firsts’ at comets.”

The Rosetta spacecraft followed Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko through the Solar System for two years until it reached the sun and became active on Aug. 6, 2014. On Nov. 12, 2014, the spacecraft sent the Philae robot lander down to the comet’s surface.

Project scientist Matt Taylor said the data collected by the mission had “blown it all open”.

“Both Rosetta and Philae only scratched the surface. We have decades of work to do on this mission, years of science to come,” he said, referring to the analysis that must now be done to understand all of the mass data sent back by the spacecraft during the last two years and its landing today.

“A culmination of tremendous scientific and technical success,” said Patrick Martin, Rosetta mission manager. “Farewell Rosetta, you have done the job.”

Rosetta had been studying the comet in order to better understand how the Earth formed, where the water in Earth’s oceans came from and how the chemical building blocks of life were delivered to this planet.

During the descent, Rosetta used the opportunity to study the comet’s gas, dust and plasma environment very close to its surface, as well as take high-resolution images.

Jean-Pierre Bibring, Lead Lander Scientist at French aerospace body IAS, said: “Philae and Rosetta have shown us that the comet contains all of the complex ingredients that could have helped life form on Earth.”

Rosetta is an ESA mission with contributions from its member states and NASA. Its amazing journey lasted 12 years, six months and 28 days from launch on March 2, 2004 to mission end on Friday.

“I don’t know what to say,” said a very emotional Matt Taylor after the landing. “But I’ll say something... Rosetta was rock and roll. It turned everything up to 11.”