The MiARD project (Multi-Instrument Analysis of Rosetta Data) lasted 30 months and was led by Professor Nicolas Thomas from the University of Berne. This project aimed to make optimum use of the Rosetta Mision data. The most significant results have now been published.
A brief review of the Rosetta mission
ESA’s Rosetta mission was designed to understand the formation of our solar system by studying a comet. The task consisted of an orbiter and the lander Philae. After its launch on 2nd March 2004, the probe took another ten years to reach the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at a distance of 6.4 billion kilometers. On 6th August 2014, the time had come, Rosetta had reached its target.
On 12th November 2014, the lander Philae was separated from the Rosetta orbiter. The landing sequence took about seven hours, and the sink rate of Philae was about 1m/s. Shortly after the first confirmation of the landing, however, there were signs that Philae could not anchor himself sufficiently on the comet surface. There were also irregularities in the radio link. The lander bounced off the comet twice before finally coming to a halt about a kilometer from the planned landing point. However, the rebound of Philae allowed conclusions to be drawn about the ground conditions of the intended landing site, which is covered with a 20-centimeter thick layer of dust with the strength of fresh snow. Because of the other landing place and the associated different position, Philae only got sun for 1.5 hours on a comet day of 13 hours. However, the lander was designed for 6 hours of sunlight. As a result, part of the mission could not be completed.
Mosaic of four images taken by Rosetta's navigation camera
Copyright: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM, Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
After almost two years of data collection on the comet, the mission ended on 30th September 2016 with the planned collision of Rosetta with the comet.
"With the placement of the Rosetta probe on the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a unique mission has come to an end that has fascinated us for years. It has brought us close to the exploration of celestial bodies,
says Brigitte Zypries, Federal Government Coordinator for Aerospace.
"The European Rosetta mission has provided the scientists with a wealth of data that they will continue to evaluate and interpret for many years to come.
The Rosetta mission brought us also this fascinating gif from another world. It shows the surface of the comet. The fast-moving light points are dust and cosmic rays, while the slower downwards moving in the background are stars.
Copyright: ESA/Rosetta/OSIRIS, Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
Evaluation of the data by the MiARD project (Multi-Instrument Analysis of Rosetta Data)
The controlled crash on 30th September 2016 did not mean the end of the scientific work around the Rosetta mission. The international research project MiARD under the direction of Professor Nicolas Thomas from the Physics Institute of the University of Bern aimed to make optimum use of the data collected by Rosetta. Complementary data obtained with different instruments were processed in a way that a numerical model could be developed and tested.
One of the goals of this research is to understand the origins of the solar and planetary systems better.
"Our research results should help explain the behavior of the comet and help to understand its history,"
says Professor Nicolas Thomas.
The MiARD project aims to create fundamental research results that can be applied worldwide. The effects include a high-resolution digital 3D model that can be used by researchers worldwide for investigations. An improved map of geological regions has also been produced.
"Such results are important if humanity ever has to use a comet or distract it from a possible collision course with Earth,"
says Professor Nicolas Thomas also.
A numerical model has also been developed which explains the loss of mass under the influence of the sun. This allows better and more accurate calculation of comet dust orbits.
Meanwhile, more than a dozen publications have emerged from the MiARD project, others are already in preparation. The work will also be used to plan any follow-up missions.
I would have liked to show the mapped comet, but unfortunately all pictures I found have the wrong license.
A four-image mosaic taken from a distance of 28.0 km from the centre of the comet.
Copyright: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM, Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
References:
https://www.dlr.de/dlr/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10394/
https://www.dlr.de/dlr/de/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10454/662_read-19539#/gallery/24505
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/67P/Churyumov%E2%80%93Gerasimenko
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philae_(Sonde)
http://www.unibe.ch/aktuell/medien/media_relations/medienmitteilungen/2018/medienmitteilungen_2018/neue_kometen_modelle_dank_daten_von_chury/index_ger.html
http://www.miard.eu/
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Copyright note for my pictures:
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Glad to read some update about this. I followed it in the early days, but then lost attention. Thanks for bringing it here!
Thank you very much for your feedback @lemouth
Yeah, somehow Rosetta slipped into oblivion after the controlled crash. Perhaps it is also because the evaluation of such amounts of data takes a lot of time and are published late after a mission.
Yes, time is always needed. This is jsut true for any (especially large-scale whatever is the scale) experiments :)
I always appreciate when writers are kind enough to describe the distance of space journeys in years, as I find nearly impossible to make sense of numbers such as '6.4 billion kilometers' 😅
I had heard about the Rosetta Mission before in the news, but I wasn't aware of its purpose, or of the planned collision. It is also new info for me to learn that the Rosetta Mission research is still ongoing, despite the crash!
Well, thank you for this informative, straight-forward write-up @astrophoto.kevin
Best :)
Thank you very much for your comment @abigail-dantes
Above a certain size, the distances and sizes are no longer so easily imaginable. Whereby I find it a bit of pity with a value in light years that the sheer distance is slightly lost. You first have to rethink this somehow into a normal traveling speed in order to understand the almost unattainable distance.
I think and hope that the Rosetta Mission will produce many more insights and publications. It will certainly take some time to process and analyze the complete data. Such data can also be included again and again in new calculations or new models can be calculated from it. In the end, a model raises new questions whose answers may be found in the data.
I am very pleased that this post was informative for you.
Greetz :-)
I've seen the gif of that surface so many times and I keep thinking I'll get tired of it. I never do.
I'm not getting tired of it either. Actually, it looks like looking out of the window at night in winter and it snows. But just the thought that it was taken on a comet at a distance of billions of kilometers is so breathtaking.
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