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Rosetta's Finale.


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It has been decided that Rosetta will be sent into the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It will be de-orbited and allowed to impact at a sedate 1.8 mph. Whether this will destroy the craft or not is not sure, but it won't ever be contactable again.

They were intending to hibernate it, but they can't be sure that it would have enough power to respond, given that the power input from the solar panels is diminishing anyway, mostly down to it's vast distance from the Sun which is only going to increase any way.

It's not all bad news though, this incredible craft has already supplied masses of data including some truly stunning images of the Comet, it will send back even more images on the way in and more precise measurements of the Comet. It's final day will be September the 30th.

I actually feel a bit sad about this. I got interested in Astronomy and the stars some forty odd years ago and never in my wildest imagination would have have ever thought that we would see such amazing images actually from a Comet. This has been yet another spectacular mission success for ESA.

 

 

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_finale_set_for_30_September

 

 

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Totally agree Martyn.

Its been an amazing mission hasn't it ?

 

All good things come to an end though. Cassini won't be far behind.

 

But there's always new missions ahead to look forward to.

Today is a big day in itself, as the Juno probe (hopefully) goes into orbit around Jupiter and starts its own mission. Fingers x'ed :)

 

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Rosetta did a fantastic job, but there's definitely still a lot of exciting stuff happening out there. Looking forward to more discoveries from Juno.

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42 minutes ago, Tweedledee said:

Rosetta did a fantastic job, but there's definitely still a lot of exciting stuff happening out there. Looking forward to more discoveries from Juno.

Agreed, it's been a fantastic mission, an incredible achievement with stunning data and photographs.

This is a great update on the Rosetta mission Martyn ?

 

Following on from what you said Pete, there are lots of space missions in progress, like the India Mars mission. This is little talked about, but is producing some great photos etc.

http://www.space.com/23203-india-mars-orbiter-mission-photos.html

cheers!

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I am looking forward to what Juno turns up. They are a bit worried that the Planet's radiation will kill it. They have tried to protect it with 1cm thick titanium plates, but they have nothing that violet that it could be tested with on Earth. There should be some amazing images coming back.

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Looking forward to the Juno mission! It's a British rocket that will fire up in about 12 hrs to slow the craft down so fingers crossed for that?

 

A couple of years ago we had a talk at our MSAS observatory from Professor Emma Bunce of Leicester University about the future exploration of the Jupiter system during which she talked about the Juno mission with which she has been closely involved.

 

Well, after a 5 year journey of Juno is about to arrive... ?

Things do come around... Eventually ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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