Rosetta, the Comet Hunter

Roland Piquepaille writes: "After being delayed for about a year because of a failure of the Ariane-5 rocket, the Rosetta spacecraft is scheduled to be launched on February 26. Rosetta is a special spacecraft, including an orbiter and a lander. And it will take up to 2014 before landing on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko -- with the help of a harpoon. Then, as says the European Space Agency (ESA), Rosetta will help to solve planetary mysteries. This news release looks at the goals of Rosetta's mission and explains why it will take more than ten years to reach the comet. But here the 'funny' part of the story: the landing. 'In November 2014, the lander will be ejected from the spacecraft from a height which could be as low as one kilometre. Touchdown will be at walking speed, about one metre per second. Immediately after touchdown, the lander will fire a harpoon into the ground to avoid bouncing off the surface back into space, since the comet's extremely weak gravity alone would not hold onto the lander.' This overview contains more details and includes illustrations of the Rosetta's spacecraft and its landing on the comet."

Comments

Got some doubt going here...

[mobiux]

I know that landing on Mars is a very tough thing, lots of variables to consider.

But this seems like it would be exponentially harder.
Ya know, landing on something that doesn't have gravity and they don't know what it's made of.

Dangerous route

[Limburgher]

I'm just hoping Rosetta survives the trip. I can just picture it getting Beagle-2'd by an asteroid on one of it's 2 trips through the asteroid belt. I mean, I know it's a longshot, but you never know. I hope ESA's luck improves with this one. Thie could be realy cool.

Re:Dangerous route

[snake_dad]

It sounds like you think that ESA has trouble putting together a succesful mission based on the fact that Beagle2 seems to have failed (maybe I'm wrong, but that's the impression that I got from your post)...

First, Beagle2 was not an ESA project, but that's nitpicking... Second, the "main" part of the European Mars mission, the Mars Express, is working flawlessly thusfar, with spectacular imagery sent back already.

And, there have been many more succesful ESA missions. There have been many more ESA missions (click the Science Missions dropdown box). Remember the Giotto mission to the comet Halley, Smart-1 now flying to the Moon using an ion engine, Cluster examining the solar wind, Integral doing X-ray research, Ulysses examining the solar system from outside the ecliptic, and the commercially succesful Ariane launcher.

I'm in no way trying to start a flame war on who has the best space agency judging on missions (IMHO NASA would win that one hands down anytime), it just irks me that one probably failed mission-part affects the public opinion about the European space efforts so much.