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Finish in beauty. This is the purpose of the last phase of the space mission Rosetta of the european space Agency (ESA). This sensor must be crushed, Friday, September 30 to 13: 30, on the comet 67P/Tchourioumov-Guerassimenko for, during the ten-hour free-fall, save of ultimate properties of the body dark and cold that she’s looking for more than two years.
also Read : Rosetta : farewell to the comet
The Europeans are the first to fly over as long a comet, including in its path the closest to the Sun during the deployment of the famous glowing tail. They are also the first to be laid, when on November 12, 2014 the probe Rosetta has released Philae, a module packed with sensors, to the surface of the ” Tchouri “.
” We made it for the science ! “, has launched Matt Taylor, the scientific leader of the mission, Thursday, September 29, at Darmstadt, in the operational centre of the ESA. It is that comets are made of the material of the oldest in the solar system, old about 4.6 billion years ago. They tell, therefore, how the planets were able to form and evolve. They could even say how the life appeared on Earth. Has condition make them talk… That is the purpose of Rosetta, whose name alludes to the Rosetta stone which helped decipher the egyptian hieroglyphs.
Read also : “Rosetta is based on the question of the ubiquity of life”
Eye sad, eye happy
The harvest of data is already impressive, after dozens of orbits of the probe from a few km altitude to several hundred, and two and a half days of operation of Philae on the surface.
” I have a sad eyes and a look happy “, is a testament of Kathrin Altwegg, head of the instrument Rosina at the university of Bern, which has detected some sixty different gas emitted by the comet. The sad eyes is for the stoppage of operations. The eye happy, for all that it remains to be discovered. the ” We have analyzed that 5 % of the data “, confirms Andre Bieler, experience, Rosina.
already, the portrait that emerges of this comet is much different than expected. The researchers were looking for a body in the shape of a potato, they have had a form of “duck” with head, neck and body. They saw the comets as balls of ice cream sales, so here they are with the opposite, a very dark containing ice. What’s more, 75% made up of empty space.
questions remain
The sheer cliffs 200 metres high, well wide and deep up to 100 metres, isolated blocks of 50 meters in diameter, regions, fractured or, on the contrary, smooth with kinds of dunes, emerged… Of the jets of gas and dust in powerful and close flashed in front of the cameras. Unknown molecules up around a comet have been identified : oxygen, argon, propane, glycine…
above all, the organic matter that it contains, fascinates. the ” comets do not contain life, but they were able to begin the process that made it possible “, explained Kathrin Altwegg in Darmstadt. The instruments have indeed spotted, without identifying them, plethoras of macromolecules based on carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, which could serve as a brick to the biochemistry.
many questions remain, such as the location of the formation of these comets, or the way in which small dust of a few micrometers are become blocks of 4 kilometers.
The last dive will bring its batch of images and information about the speed of ejection of the dust, the magnetic field, the gravity… ” May be will we find new “animals“ “, hopes to Kathrin Altwegg, thereby designating the chemical molecules not yet detected. the ” Without a doubt, new questions will come ! “, writes Matt Taylor.
The first images should be released in the morning and continued right up until the final crash.
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