Tag: Comet

  • Titan drone, comet sampler picked as finalists for NASA mission

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    Artist’s concept of the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. Credit: NASA NASA has narrowed its choices for a new billion-dollar robotic space mission: A nuclear-powered quadcopter to explore the hazy landscape of Saturn’s largest moon Titan, or a probe to scoop up a piece of a comet and return it to Earth. The space…

  • Rosetta gets ringside seat to smelly comet outburst

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    A short-lived outburst from Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko was captured by Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on July 29. Each image was taken 18 minutes apart, showing no activity, a sudden eruption, and then a faint trace of the jet. Rosetta was flying 186 kilometers (115 miles) from the comet at the time of the outburst. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS…

  • New contact with intractable comet lander

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    Artist’s concept of the Philae lander. Credit: DLR Europe’s Rosetta comet probe re-established momentary contact with the Philae lander late Thursday, renewing hopes of starting up the craft’s research instruments after two weeks of radio silence dampened the moods of scientists. Thursday’s contact, which lasted 12 minutes before failing, was the first time ground controllers…

  • For comet scientists, elation and redemption at Philae’s wakeup

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    Artist’s concept of Philae. Credit: ESA Research teams across Europe spent the last half-year meticulously going through a wish list of experiments for the Philae comet lander without knowing whether they would ever get a chance to execute the tasks. With Philae now awake after a seven-month slumber, scientists are eager to turn on the…

  • Engineers seek to stabilize radio link with comet lander

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    Rosetta’s navigation camera captured this view of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko awakened by the sun June 5. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NavCam Emboldened by renewed contact with Europe’s comet lander, engineers are repositioning the mission’s Rosetta mothership this week to establish a reliable a communications link with the dishwasher-sized Philae landing craft, a prerequisite for resuming a science campaign abbreviated…

  • Comet lander wakes up!

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    STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Artist’s concept of the Philae lander. Credit: DLR The European Space Agency’s Philae comet lander, out of power and presumably lost after bouncing into heavily shadowed terrain last November, phoned home Saturday after finally getting enough sunlight on its solar panels to transmit data to the Rosetta orbiter…

  • Tour comet 67P in Rosetta’s latest image release

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    The latest batch of images released from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission shows the brutal gray landscape of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in vivid detail. ESA posted 1,776 images from Rosetta’s navigation camera on the agency’s website Thursday, adding to a growing catalog of imagery of comet 67P since the probe arrived in August 2014. The…

  • Rosetta keeps its distance from awakening comet

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    Rosetta’s navigation camera took images for this mosaic of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on April 8. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM Mission controllers are rethinking a series of close-up comet flybys planned for Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft after a haze of dust around the comet’s central nucleus led to navigation errors during a close encounter in late March. Rosetta’s computer put…

  • Diverse destinations considered for new interplanetary probe

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    NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft collected images for this montage of Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io in 2007. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Goddard Space Flight Center Science teams from across the United States have submitted 28 proposals for missions to explore the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, touch the asteroid-like…

  • Rosetta probe disoriented by comet dust

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    This view of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was taken by Rosetta’s navigation camera on March 22, showing a cloud of dust and gas surrounding the nucleus. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM Ground controllers are analyzing a fault aboard Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft after an encounter with comet dust confused the probe’s navigation system, leaving the robot explorer in a temporary safe…