Comet Landing – An ambitious mission!!!

A rocket with a caption ‘Ariaan’ carrying the spacecraft ‘ROSETTA’ was launched successfully by the KURU Space Center at French Guyana of South America. This is one of the most ambitious projects to carry out study of a comet in more than 10 years with a journey of several million miles.

Due to some technical problems and bad weather conditions, the launching operation for the spacecraft was postponed twice in the last week. And it was successfully launched in the third setting the next time. Robotic machinery will be landed on the comet ‘67P – Churimov – Gerasimenco’ nearly in 2014. ‘ROSETTA’ is world’s first mission which will try to land some machinery on a comet in order to study it.

The launching of this mission was supposed to be carried out in January 2003 where the earlier version of the rocket ‘Ariaan’ was intended to carry the spacecraft to the comet ‘Virtenen’. But in the launching operation, ISAA Space Agency lost its two launching vehicles (Rockets) and ‘ROSETTA’ had to wait for long. In May – 2003 the mission was revised and a new ‘Launch Window’ was designed for this mission, and at last it was launched last week.

Mission Director John Elwood said "The spacecraft ‘ROSETTA’ will be separated after two hours from the launching of ‘Ariaan’. We want the spacecraft to follow the path of the comet and it has to travel a distance of several million miles for a long period of time which is estimated to be nearly 10 years. And this is not an easy task to complete."

It is not possible to put ‘ROSETTA’ straight at the point where it is intended to reach by any of the available Launching Vehicle in whole world. So the method of increasing speed using the gravitation force of Earth and Mars will be used. In this process the ‘ROSETTA’ has to revolve thrice around Earth and once around Mars in order to attain the required speed. ‘ROSETTA’ will gain more and more speed as it will complete each revolution around each of these planets. ‘ROSETTA’ will complete its one revolution around Earth in March 2005, then it will revolve around Mars in March 2007 and the next around Earth will be on November 2007. The last revolution it will complete around Earth will be on November 2009, thus gaining required speed it will start its journey to the target comet.

‘ROSETTA’ will carry 11 scientific gadgets; it has a 2.2 meter diameter antenna. The two sides are attached with two 14 meters long solar-cells will be used to collect energy necessary to drive the electrical equipments on the spacecraft. As the comet is at far distance from sun, it is hardly possible to collect more solar energy; all the other equipments except a computer and a receiver will be kept off to preserve energy for a specific period of time. Once the spacecraft enters the last orbit of the comet, all the equipments will be turned on for the communication. The thrusters will be used to control the speed of the spacecraft and using it the spacecraft will spend time in the orbit of comet studying it.

In the last step, a Lander will land the spacecraft on the comet in November 2014. The cameras and all the machinery will record the environment of the comet and the information will be transmitted to the earth.

According to the scientists, the comets are right from the birth of our planet and may be before that. It can help reveal mysteries which have always eluded human being, the reason for evolution of life on the planet Earth. Hope the scientists will be able to learn maximum from this ambitious mission, and help us find out more amazing things!!!