"Rosetta (spacecraft) Rosetta was a space probe built by the European Space Agency launched on 2 March 2004. Along with ""Philae"", its lander module, ""Rosetta"" performed a detailed study of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (67P). During its journey to the comet, the spacecraft flew by Mars and the asteroids 21 Lutetia and 2867 Šteins. It was launched as the third cornerstone mission of the ESA's Horizon 2000 programme, after ""SOHO""""Cluster"" and ""XMM-Newton"". On 6 August 2014, the spacecraft reached the comet and performed a series of manoeuvres to eventually orbit the comet at distances of . On 12 November, its lander module"
"Philae (spacecraft) Philae ( or ) is a robotic European Space Agency lander that accompanied the ""Rosetta"" spacecraft until it separated to land on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, ten years and eight months after departing Earth. On 12 November 2014, ""Philae"" touched down on the comet, but it bounced when its anchoring harpoons failed to deploy and a thruster designed to hold the probe to the surface did not fire. After bouncing off the surface twice, ""Philae"" achieved the first-ever ""soft"" (nondestructive) landing on a comet nucleus, although the lander's final, uncontrolled touchdown left it in a non-optimal location and orientation. Despite"
"for 17 months and was designed to complete the most detailed study of a comet ever attempted. The spacecraft was controlled from the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), in Darmstadt, Germany. The planning for the operation of the scientific payload, together with the data retrieval, calibration, archiving and distribution, was performed from the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), in Villanueva de la Cañada, near Madrid, Spain. It has been estimated that in the decade preceding 2014, some 2,000 people assisted in the mission in some capacity. In 2007, ""Rosetta"" made a Mars gravity assist (flyby) on its way to Comet"
"in 2014 and was the first mission to land a space probe on a comet. As preparation for the ""Rosetta"" mission, Hubble Space Telescope pictures taken on 12 March 2003 were closely analysed. An overall 3D model was constructed and computer-generated images were created. On 25 April 2012, the most detailed observations until that time were taken with the 2-metre Faulkes Telescope by N. Howes, G. Sostero and E. Guido while it was at its aphelion. On 6 June 2014, water vapor was detected being released at a rate of roughly when ""Rosetta"" was from Churyumov–Gerasimenko and from the Sun."
"2014 in spaceflight In 2014, the maiden flight of the Angara A5, Antares 120 and Antares 130 took place. An Ariane 5 ES launched the ""Georges Lemaître"" Automated Transfer Vehicle, the last one of the series, which also marked 60 successfully completed Ariane 5 launches in a row. On 22 August 2014, Arianespace launched the first two Full Operational Capability Galileo satellites for the European satellite navigation system. A number of significant events in planetary exploration occurred in 2014, including the entry of the Rosetta spacecraft into orbit around the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in August 2014 and the deployment of the"
"rendezvoused with Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 6 August 2014 and entered orbit on 10 September 2014. ""Rosetta"" lander, ""Philae"", landed on the comet's surface on 12 November 2014, becoming the first spacecraft to land on a comet nucleus. On 30 September 2016, the ""Rosetta"" spacecraft ended its mission by landing on the comet in its Ma'at region. Churyumov–Gerasimenko was discovered in 1969 by Klim Ivanovich Churyumov of the Kiev University's Astronomical Observatory, who examined a photograph that had been exposed for comet Comas Solà by Svetlana Ivanovna Gerasimenko on 11 September 1969 at the Alma-Ata Astrophysical Institute, near Alma-Ata (now Almaty), the"
"Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The spacecraft also performed two asteroid flybys. The craft completed its flyby of asteroid 2867 Šteins in September 2008 and of 21 Lutetia in July 2010. Later, on 20 January 2014, ""Rosetta"" was taken out of a 31-month hibernation mode as it approached Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko. ""Rosetta"" ""Philae"" lander successfully made the first soft landing on a comet nucleus when it touched down on Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 12 November 2014. On 5 September 2016, ESA announced that the lander was discovered by the narrow-angle camera aboard ""Rosetta"" as the orbiter made a low, pass over the comet. The lander sits"
"search engine Google featured a Google Doodle of ""Philae"" on its home page. On 31 December 2014, Google featured ""Philae"" again as part of its New Year's Eve 2014 Doodle. Online comic author Randall Munroe wrote a live updating strip on his website ""xkcd"" on the day of the landing. Philae (spacecraft) Philae ( or ) is a robotic European Space Agency lander that accompanied the ""Rosetta"" spacecraft until it separated to land on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, ten years and eight months after departing Earth. On 12 November 2014, ""Philae"" touched down on the comet, but it bounced when its anchoring"
"Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription. ""Rosetta"" was launched on 2 March 2004 from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana on an Ariane 5 rocket and reached Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 7 May 2014. It performed a series of manoeuvres to enter orbit between then and 6 August 2014, when it became the first spacecraft to orbit a comet. (Previous missions had conducted successful flybys of seven other comets.) It was one of ESA's Horizon 2000 cornerstone missions. The spacecraft consisted of the ""Rosetta"" orbiter, which featured 12 instruments, and the ""Philae"" lander, with nine additional instruments. The ""Rosetta"" mission orbited Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko"
"""Philae"" performed the first successful landing on a comet, though its battery power ran out two days later. Communications with ""Philae"" were briefly restored in June and July 2015, but due to diminishing solar power, ""Rosetta"" communications module with the lander was turned off on 27 July 2016. On 30 September 2016, the ""Rosetta"" spacecraft ended its mission by hard-landing on the comet in its Ma'at region. The probe was named after the Rosetta Stone, a stele of Egyptian origin featuring a decree in three scripts. The lander was named after the Philae obelisk, which bears a bilingual Greek and"
"fleet kept the shuttles on the ground for nearly three years. The returning Halley's comet is met by a fleet of five probes from Russia, Japan, and Europe. The most ambitious is the European Space Agency's Giotto spacecraft, which flies through the comet's coma and photographs the nucleus. The Magellan probe, launched by NASA, arrives at Venus and spends three years mapping the planet with radar. Magellan is the first in a new wave of probes that include Galileo, which arrives at Jupiter in 1995, and Cassini which arrives at Saturn in 2004. The Hubble Space Telescope, the first large"
"Mercury. The mission was approved in November 2009, after years in proposal and planning as part of the European Space Agency's Horizon 2000+ programme; it is the last mission of the programme to be launched. ""BepiColombo"" is named after Giuseppe ""Bepi"" Colombo (1920–1984), a scientist, mathematician and engineer at the University of Padua, Italy, who first implemented the interplanetary gravity-assist manoeuvre during the 1974 ""Mariner 10"" mission, a technique now commonly used by planetary probes. The mission involves three components, which will separate into independent spacecraft upon arrival at Mercury. During launch and cruise phase, these three components are joined"
"of operations at the comet. ""Rosetta"" began a descent with a 208-second thruster burn executed on 29 September 2016 at approximately 20:50 UTC. Its trajectory targeted a site in the Ma'at region near an area of dust- and gas-producing active pits. Impact on the comet's surface occurred 14.5 hours after its descent manoeuvre; the final data packet from ""Rosetta"" was transmitted at 10:39:28.895 UTC (SCET) by the OSIRIS instrument and was received at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, at 11:19:36.541 UTC. The spacecraft's estimated speed at the time of impact was , and its touchdown location, named"
"Cluster II (spacecraft) Cluster II is a space mission of the European Space Agency, with NASA participation, to study the Earth's magnetosphere over the course of nearly two solar cycles. The mission is composed of four identical spacecraft flying in a tetrahedral formation. As a replacement for the original Cluster spacecraft which were lost in a launch failure in 1996, the four Cluster II spacecraft were successfully launched in pairs in July and August 2000 onboard two Soyuz-Fregat rockets from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. In February 2011, Cluster II celebrated 10 years of successful scientific operations in space. The mission has been"
"and Opportunity, landed on planet Mars, using in the Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer a Silicon Drift Detector for the X-ray analysis of the soil and the rocks. In 2014, the space probe of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission launched in 2004 reached the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and its lander Philae, which includes among its instruments an APXS fitted with a SDD detector, landed on the comet to analyse the nucleus. At Geneva’s CERN's ALICE experiment has been operational since 2008 on the Large Hadron Collider for the study of interactions between heavy ions: it employs a large particle detection system"
"studied from Earth sometimes with centuries-worth of observations, only a few comets have been closely visited. In 1985, the ""International Cometary Explorer"" conducted the first comet fly-by (21P/Giacobini-Zinner) before joining the Halley Armada studying the famous comet. The ""Deep Impact"" probe smashed into 9P/Tempel to learn more about its structure and composition and the ""Stardust"" mission returned samples of another comet's tail. The ""Philae"" lander successfully landed on Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko in 2014 as part of the broader ""Rosetta"" mission. ""Hayabusa"" was an unmanned spacecraft developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to return a sample of material from the small"
"of Expedition 50/Expedition 51. Arriving at the ISS on November 19, 2016, he is the first French astronaut since Léopold Eyharts helped install the Columbus European laboratory module during Expedition 16. His arrival marks the beginning of the European Proxima mission. The Proxima mission will include 50 science experiments for ESA and CNES. The mission is named after Proxima Centauri, continuing the French astronauts' tradition of naming the missions after stars and constellations. The X inside the logo symbolizes that Pesquet is the tenth French astronaut as well as the unknown. The Proxima mission name was chosen in a competition,"
"was launched in 2011 and arrived at Jupiter in the summer of 2016. A 2002 paper noted the following challenges for this mission ""substantial energy required for a direct trajectory, the long duration of the mission, the high total-radiation dose, and the need for radioisotope thermoelectric generators"" One mission plan involved first entering Jovian orbit, then use multiple gravity assists from the Moons of Jupiter to help it to enter the orbit of Europa with less rocket fuel. Later in the 21st century, it was suggested the goal of the Europa Orbiter should have been to find places where the"
"together to form the Mercury Cruise System (MCS). The prime contractor for ESA is Airbus Defence and Space. ESA is responsible for the overall mission, the design, development assembly and test of the propulsion and MPO modules, and the launch. The two orbiters were successfully launched together on 20 October 2018, on Ariane flight VA245. The spacecraft will have a seven-year interplanetary cruise to Mercury using solar-electric propulsion (ion thrusters) and gravity assists from Earth, Venus and eventual gravity capture at Mercury. ESA's Cebreros 35-metre ground station is planned to be the primary ground facility for communications during all mission"
"has its own propulsion system for controlling shipping. Vesta, the multiaimed Soviet mission, developed in cooperation with European countries for realisation in 1991–1994 but canceled due to the Soviet Union disbanding, included the flyby of Mars with delivering the aerostat and small landers or penetrators followed by flybys of 1 Ceres or 4 Vesta and some other asteroids with impact of large penetrator on the one of them. The cancelled NASA's Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby mission considered the launch in 1995 and landing of penetrators on comet's nucleus in 2001. The first landing on a similarly small body, the asteroid"
"the comet as it became more active. The last communication was on 9 July 2015, and mission controllers were unable to instruct ""Philae"" to carry out new investigations. Subsequently, ""Philae"" failed to respond to further commands, and by January 2016, controllers acknowledged no further communications were likely. On 27 July 2016, at 09:00 UTC, ESA switched off the Electrical Support System Processor Unit (ESS) onboard ""Rosetta"", making further communications with ""Philae"" impossible. The lander was located on 2 September 2016 by the narrow-angle camera aboard ""Rosetta"" as it was slowly making its descent to the comet. The search for the"
"phase of a return from space occurred on June 5, 2014. As of 2015, EADS Astrium was awaiting for investors. The origin of the project is a proposal by a group of young French, German, British and Spanish engineers from EADS Astrium. It was studied in great secrecy for two years and finally approved by the chairman of EADS Astrium, François Auque. The design is similar in concept to the Rocketplane XP. They looked at the main concepts under development and their studies showed that Rocketplane's jet and rocket combination made the most sense. In the following months, a core"
"day. In 2011, a Europa mission was recommended by the U.S. Planetary Science Decadal Survey. In response, NASA commissioned Europa lander concept studies in 2011, along with concepts for a Europa flyby (""Europa Clipper""), and a Europa orbiter. The orbiter element option concentrates on the ""ocean"" science, while the multiple-flyby element (""Clipper"") concentrates on the chemistry and energy science. On 13 January 2014, the House Appropriations Committee announced a new bipartisan bill that includes $80 million funding to continue the Europa mission concept studies. In the early 2000s, ""Jupiter Europa Orbiter"" led by NASA and the ""Jupiter Ganymede Orbiter"" led"
"88 months of travel. By 2033 the spacecraft should enter orbit around Ganymede for its close up science mission and becoming the first spacecraft to orbit a moon other than the moon of Earth. The selection of this mission for the L1 launch slot of ESA's Cosmic Vision science programme was announced on 2 May 2012. Its period of operations will overlap with NASA's ""Europa Clipper"" mission, also launching in 2022. The mission started as a reformulation of the Jupiter Ganymede Orbiter proposal, which was to be ESA's component of the cancelled Europa Jupiter System Mission—Laplace (EJSM-Laplace). It became a"
"September 2016, Vangelis released the studio album ""Rosetta"" in honour of the mission, which was used on 30 September in the ""Rosetta's final hour"" streaming video of the ESA Livestream event ""Rosetta Grand Finale"". Rosetta (spacecraft) Rosetta was a space probe built by the European Space Agency launched on 2 March 2004. Along with ""Philae"", its lander module, ""Rosetta"" performed a detailed study of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (67P). During its journey to the comet, the spacecraft flew by Mars and the asteroids 21 Lutetia and 2867 Šteins. It was launched as the third cornerstone mission of the ESA's Horizon 2000 programme,"
"comet in August 2001, then would continue to fly beside Kopff. The spacecraft would take data for a total of two and two-thirds years, until about 109 days after they pass closest to the Sun and are outward bound again. It was to be the first time a spacecraft would have flown in formation with a comet, though a U.S. spacecraft, International Cometary Explorer (ICE), flew by Comet Giacobini-Zinner in 1985, spacecraft from several countries encountered Comet Halley in 1986, and the Giotto spacecraft flew past Comet Grigg-Skjellerup in 1992. The comet rendezvous would allow study of matter that scientists"
"the European Data Relay System (EDRS) on November 28, 2014. The system is operational and is being used on a daily basis. NASA's OPALS announced a breakthrough in space-to-ground communication December 9, 2014, uploading 175 megabytes in 3.5 seconds. Their system is also able to re-acquire tracking after the signal was lost due to cloud cover. In January 2013, NASA used lasers to beam an image of the Mona Lisa to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter roughly 390,000 km (240,000 mi) away. To compensate for atmospheric interference, an error correction code algorithm similar to that used in CDs was implemented. A"
"but contact was then lost. The lander's location was identified to within a few tens of metres, but it was not seen. ""Philae"", though silent, was finally identified unambiguously, lying on its side in a deep crack in the shadow of a cliff, in photographs taken by ""Rosetta"" on 2 September 2016 as the orbiter was sent on orbits closer to the comet. Knowledge of its precise location will help in interpretation of the images it had sent. On 30 September 2016, the ""Rosetta"" spacecraft ended its mission by crashing in the comet's Ma'at region. The lander is named after"
"the orbiter. Hence, over several orbits, many different paths will have been obtained. The lander communicated with the ""Rosetta"" orbiter again on 9 July 2015 and transmitted measurement data from the CONSERT instrument. CONSERT CONSERT (COmet Nucleus Sounding Experiment by Radiowave Transmission) is a scientific experiment on board the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission, launched in 2004, which will provide information about the deep interior of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko upon the probe's rendezvous with the comet in 2014. The CONSERT radar will perform tomography of the nucleus by measuring electromagnetic wave propagation from the Philae lander and the Rosetta orbiter"
"lifetime are required. The Intermediate Experimental Vehicle (IXV), a project initiated by ESA in 2009, is Europe's first lifting body reentry vehicle. Developed by Thales Alenia Space, the IXV is scheduled to make its first flight in 2014 on the fourth Vega mission (VV04) over the Gulf of Guinea. More than 40 European companies contributed to its construction. The thermal protection system for the underside of the vehicle, comprising the nose, leading edges and lower surface of the wing, were designed and made by Herakles using a ceramic matrix composite (CMC), carbon/silicon-carbide (C/SiC). These components will function as the vehicle's"
"Envisat cost €2.3 billion (including €300 million for 5 years of operations) to develop and launch. The mission is due to be replaced by the Sentinel series of satellites. The first of these, Sentinel 1, has taken over the radar duties of Envisat since its launch in 2014. Envisat was launched as an Earth observation satellite. Its objective was to service the continuity of European Remote-Sensing Satellite missions, providing additional observational parameters to improve environmental studies. In working towards the global and regional objectives of the mission, numerous scientific disciplines currently use the data acquired from the different sensors on"
"and return to Earth with comet samples of the nucleus and its coma. If selected for development, the mission would have launched on 2024, cruise to the comet would take 7 years, including two Earth gravity assists. Rendezvouz with the 88P/Howell would happen in May 2031 and the interactions would last up to 294 days. The return trip to Earth would take about 4.3 years. CORSAIR's conceptual scientific payload include: Surface samples would be obtained with the use of a harpoon-like penetrator. Comet Rendezvous, Sample Acquisition, Investigation, and Return Comet Rendezvous, Sample Acquisition, Investigation, and Return (CORSAIR) is a concept"
"launch date of 26 February 2004 and comet rendezvous in 2014. The larger mass and the resulting increased impact velocity made modification of the landing gear necessary. After two scrubbed launch attempts, ""Rosetta"" was launched on 2 March 2004 at 07:17 UTC from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana. Aside from the changes made to launch time and target, the mission profile remained almost identical. Both co-discoverers of the comet, Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko, were present at the spaceport during the launch. To achieve the required velocity to rendezvous with 67P, ""Rosetta"" used gravity assist manoeuvres to accelerate"