Today I am going to talk about a comet that has been observed for more than a couple decades ago, a spacecraft mission, and how it may be useful to the human kind. First I want to tell you some facts about the comet. It’s Churyumov-Gerasimenko, or simply 67P. The comet was first discovered in 20 September 1969. It was discovered by two astronomers, Soviet and Ukrainian Klim Ivanovich Churyumov, and Soviet Ukrainian and Tajikistani Svetlana Gerasimenko. The comet’s orbital period is 6.45 years, which means the time taken for a given object to make one complete orbit around another object. 67P is approximately 4.1 kilometres by 4.3 kilometres at its widest and longest dimensions. Robetta is a space probe that was built and launched to perform a detailed study of comet 67P, with an orbiter and a lander module called Philae. Robetta was launched on 2 March 2004. Rosetta reached the comet on 6 August 2014. It was the very first spacecraft to orbit a comet. …show more content…
The lander achieved the first ever controlled touchdown on a comet nucleus operated from the European Space Operations Centre in Germany. The scientists tried to meet as many of the core science goals as possible before the primary battery was exhausted. Philae was supposed to have seven hours of light per comet day, but now it was only 1.5 hours a day. That was due to bouncing away upon the landing, and the light is not enough to charge the secondary battery. Scientists hope however that Philae’s solar panels will see sunlight again as the comet approaches the sun, and that will allow the batteries to re-charge and enable the lander to perform science once more. And as the professor McCaughrean said during an interview, “There’s a trade off – once it gets too hot, Philae will die as well. There is a sweet