Alea jacta est, the die is cast! The european probe Rosetta was launched on Thursday night its slow descent suicidal to the comet Tchouri on which it is to crash Friday in mid-day.
A tweet from the european space Agency (ESA) has confirmed that the probe was placed, at the expected time, on a path leading to a collision with Tchouri. “Next stop: 67P!”, wrote the ESA on Twitter.
This end spectacular will put a final end to an odyssey space history over twelve years of age, crowned by nearly 26 months of companionship fruitful with the comet 67P.
The probe will use his last strength to try to accumulate the most scientific data possible during these last hours.
“We’re very excited,” says Matt Taylor, the scientist responsible for the Rosetta mission, who was interviewed by AFP at the european Centre of space operations (ESOC) in Darmstadt (Germany).
“During the final descent, we will find ourselves in a region which we have never sampled samples”, he added.
most of The instruments of the probe will be switched on during the last hours. Rosetta will take images very close to home, “sniffera” the gas, measure the temperature of Tchouri and its severity.
The Rosetta mission, which was decided in 1993 by the european space Agency, aims to better understand the formation of the solar system. The comets that have appeared 4.5 billion years ago, are part of the objects of the most primitive of this system.
Tchouri The mission, which has cost 1.4 billion euros, has yielded a rich harvest of data that will give grist to the scientists for several years.
It has been marked by the vicissitudes of the robot-laboratory Philae that made a historic first by asking for the first time on a comet on 12 November 2014. Silent since July 2015, it has been located at the beginning of September by the probe.
With now more than 7 billion kilometres, the Rosetta, launched in 2004, escorting since August 2014, the comet Tchourioumov-Guérassimenko. But it is away now more and more of the Sun.
Equipped with large solar panels, the probe begins to run out of power. The ESA has therefore decided to put an end to the adventure while she still controls the probe.
– ‘well’ deep -
The drama plays out to more than 720 million kilometers from the Earth.
Thursday evening, around 20: 50 GMT (22: 50 Paris time), while the probe was located 19 kilometres from Tchouri, Rosetta has turned on its engines for three minutes to place on a path leading directly into collision with the comet.
The confirmation has been received by the Earth in forty minutes after.
The descent of the probe should last for 14 hours.
On the end, its speed should reach 90 centimeters per second (3.2 km/hour), “is the speed of a walking human”, note Sylvain Lodiot, head of flight operations of Rosetta at ESOC.
Rosetta was not designed to land. But the engineers have done everything that “the impact controlled” of the probe on the comet, expected on Friday at around 10.40 AM GMT (12.40 PM Paris time), to be the less harsh possible.
You will then need to 40 minutes for the Land to be informed. The ESOC is therefore expected to have the confirmation of the impact to 11: 20 AM GMT (13: 20 Paris time), at more or less 20 minutes.
The probe has been programmed to turn it off as soon as it comes into contact with the surface of the nucleus cometary.
Rosetta has landed on a box on the head of the comet that has “wells”, kinds of dimples, circular, broad and deep, from which escape sometimes jets of gas and dust.
“We hope to see on the sides of these wells are structures that could be traced back to the period during which the comet formed, and that would give us indications on the primordial evolution of the solar system”, said to AFP Jean-Pierre Bibring, scientific officer in charge of Philae.
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