Rosetta Mission: Spacecraft To Crash Head-First Into Comet

After weeks of deliberation, the European Space Agency (ESA) has reportedly decided to smash the Rosetta spacecraft head first into the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The planned crash will take place on Friday at 11:40AM BST.

The team at ESA was previously locked in a debate regarding the end of the mission, and whether it was a better option to make the spacecraft descend slowly on the comet, and subsequently get the opportunity to take many photos in the process, or simply to crash it and lose all photo opportunities but one shot. However, the first option was cancelled out because it came with the risk of disturbing more space dust and thereby spoiling the findings.

"It took some time to decide what the best solution would be, but in the end, we decided that what really mattered to us was the purity of the science," said Dr. Patrick Martin, ESA's mission manager. "It is about getting the highest-resolution images. That is going to be really challenging in terms of the downlink, but we are after a unique scientific return."

The other option that ESA had contemplated on would have been executed by using arrester rockets to slow down the spacecraft, and thereby gaining an extra 45 minutes for taking photos and analysis. However, the mission control feared that such a descent would spoil the atmosphere by disturbing the dust which would lead to fuzzy images.

The Rosetta spacecraft will now dive unarrested towards the comet, capturing a final picture of superior quality when it reaches the height of just 15 meters above the comet. However, there is a risk associated with the process, i.e. whether the spacecraft will have ample time to downlink its data back to our planet, and it's something we can know only after the procedure is complete.

The approx 1.3 billion dollar Rosetta mission by ESA is considered historic because of its impressive long-distance space navigation. The mission was launched in 2004, and the spacecraft has been orbiting the comet since August 2014, where it had taken on the task of taking readings as well as acting as the mothership of the detachable probe Philae, which incidentally made a bumpy landing on the comet. The information gathered by the mission enabled scientists to know more about the age and origin of comets and changing many misconceptions related to them.