Berlin: The European Space Agency spacecraft Rosetta will launch a lander that will land on a comet, if all goes well, on November 11, 2014, say ESA scientists.
Matt Taylor, project scientist for Rosetta, said, the spacecraft is presently in deep-space hibernation and will wake up on January 20, for a rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in November.
The comet is a huge mass of ice and rock and Rosetta will try to send a lander that will land on the surface of the comet on November 11.
Says Taylor: “This has never been done before. You have the hurdle of getting it back on, then there is a massive hurdle of getting it close to the comet... And then there's landing on it. This is going to be a year of intensity.”
This mission is different from Nasa's Deep Impact probe that fired a projectile into comet Tempel 1 in 2005 to let scientists study the plume of matter it hurled into space.
On January 20 at 15:30 IST, the spacecraft Rosetta will be woken up from deep space slumber. Presently it is in hibernation mode and on a slow spin. The on-board electronic will be warmed up and then its position will be stabilized.
Director of science, ESA, Mark McCaughrean, said the lander Philae will dig up samples of the comet and analyze them using on-board instruments.
One objective is to learn whether the water on Earth could have come from comets.
The jury is still out.
Rosetta was launched in March 2004 and has been on an epic journey through the solar system. It orbited the Earth three times and went around Mars to place it on a path towards this comet.
After travelling several millions of kilometres, and passing two asteroids, Rosetta was put into deep sleep in June 2011 to prepare for the rendezvous with the comet.
