The Rosetta mission is completed!

After its long and exciting mission, Rosetta spacecraft has landed on the comet 67P.

Rosetta has landed. Credits: ESA

The Rosetta mission to comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko ended on 30 of September, when Rosetta landed on the comet. This has been a fantastic journey and the first ever when we caught up with the comet and for two years were traveling with it around the Sun. Finally, after two years of collecting precious data, it has been decided that for the sake of science we will land it on the comet. The RPC-LAP (the Langmuir probe that collected data for us), was maybe the first to touch the surface. The spacecraft switched off automatically after the touch down. Our local Rosetta team followed this event at the Norwegian Space Centre and looked at the latest data from Rosetta while there were being collected. You will find a lot of information about Rosetta on the Rosetta blog: https://blogs.esa.int/rosetta and if you wish to watch a Rosetta promotional movie you will find it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H08tGjXNHO4 and its epilogue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSdYCPATV9o

Finally, the Rosetta mission inspired some and Vangelis has recorded a special album:

http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2016/07/29/new-vangelis-album-inspired-by-esas-rosetta-mission/

Below you can see the last image from Rosetta taken about 20 meters above the surface. 

Comet 67P photographed at a distance of 20 meters. Credits: ESA 

As for now we can just say:

Farewell Rosetta and thanks for this exciting mission and for all data that you collected! We are now analyzing them. 

 

Published Oct. 4, 2016 4:47 PM - Last modified Oct. 4, 2016 4:52 PM