European Space Agency scientists were giddy today after they finally heard from Philae, the small spacecraft they designed to land on the speeding 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet.
Touchdown! Min nya adress: 67P! #CometLanding
— Philae Lander (@Philae2014) November 12, 2014
And after it successfully landed, Philae began sending data back to mission control in Germany — a historic achievement for the European Space Agency and its Rosetta mission.
No one — not even NASA — had ever landed a probe on the surface of a speeding comet.
The *amazing* #Rosetta flickr gallery https://t.co/Z0nTvVgUrRpic.twitter.com/00ezcbky10
— Planet Labs (@planetlabs) November 12, 2014
“Oh, it's amazing. People are sort of wandering around a bit dazed, looking very tired; some of them with glasses of something bubbly and fizzy, just with great big grins on their faces.It’s just an amazing scene,” said Monica Grady, describing the scene at ESA's Mission Control in Darmstadt, Germany today.
Grady is one of the scientists involved in the mission.
We have telemetry. Andrea, do you want to make a statement? Yes, philae is sitting on the rock #CometLanding
— Monica Grady (@MonicaGrady) November 12, 2014
The journey to this moment has been a long time coming. The Rosetta satellite was launched a decade ago. Since then, Rosetta has made three slingshots around the Earth to pick up enough momentum and speed to meet up with Comet 67P. Then Rosetta travelled alongside the comet for six months, matching its speed and catching up with the moving target.
“Once it caught up with the comet it went into a series of irregular orbits around the comet so that we could get really good pictures of the comet and then gradually drifting closer and closer to the comet so that we could then send the lander,” Grady said.
That lander, Philae is what touched down on the comet today. Philae has many tasks in the year ahead.
I’m on the surface but my harpoons did not fire. My team is hard at work now trying to determine why. #CometLanding
— Philae Lander (@Philae2014) November 12, 2014
Comet 67P is about two-and-a-half miles across and Philae, as Grady describes it, is about the size of an armchair.
Landing on this comet and being able to study the molecules and water that make it up will help scientists back here on earth study the origins of our planet, Grady said.
“Comets are the fragments that are left over from the formation of the solar system. They are primitive materials that haven’t changed. They are full of water. And what we want to do is match the water and the molecules to water and molecules on Earth to see if life on Earth was helped on its way by comets,” she added.