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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:09:09 On 12 November 2014, after a ten-year journey through the Solar System and over 500 million kilometres from home, Rosetta’s lander Philae made space exploration history by touching down on a comet for the first time. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of this extraordinary feat, we celebrate by taking a look back over the mission's highlights.
Rosetta was an ESA mission with contributions from its Member States and NASA. It studied Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for over two years, including delivering lander Philae to the comet’s surface. Philae was provided by a consortium led by DLR, MPS, CNES and ASI.
read the article Philae’s extraordinary comet landing relived.
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By European Space Agency
On 12 November 2014, after a ten year journey through the Solar System and over 500 million kilometres from home, Rosetta’s lander Philae made space exploration history by touching down on a comet for the first time. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of this extraordinary feat, we celebrate Philae’s impressive achievements at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 3 min read
Sols 4355-4356: Weekend Success Brings Monday Best
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the contact science target “Black Bear Lake” from about 7 centimeters away (about 3 inches), using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). The MAHLI, located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm, used an onboard focusing process to merge multiple images of the same target into a composite image, on Nov. 3, 2024 – sol 4353, or Martian day 4,353 of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission – at 21:36:01 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Earth planning date: Monday, Nov. 4, 2024
After a spooky week last week, it’s great to see all our weekend plans succeed as planned! We don’t take success for granted as a rover going on 13 years. With all of the science at our fingertips and all the battery power we could need, the team took right advantage of this two-sol touch-and-go Monday plan. We have a bedrock DRT target for APXS and MAHLI named “Epidote Peak” and a MAHLI-only target of a crushed rock we drove over named “Milly’s Foot Path.”
APXS data is better when it’s cold, so we’ve planned the DRT brushing and APXS to start our first sol about 11:14 local Gale time. MAHLI images are usually better in the afternoon lighting, so we’ll leave the arm unstowed and spend some remote science time beforehand, about 12:15 local time. ChemCam starts that off with a LIBS raster over a bedrock block with some interesting light and dark layering, named “Albanita Meadows” and seen here in the the upper-right-ish of this Navcam workspace frame. ChemCam will then take a long-distance RMI mosaic of a portion of the upper Gediz Vallis ridge to the north. Mastcam continues the remote science with an Albanita Meadows documentation image, a 21-frame stereo mosaic of some dark-toned upturned blocks about 5 meters away (about 16 feet), a four-frame stereo mosaic of some polygonal fracture patterns about 20 meters away (about 66 feet), and a mega 44-frame stereo mosaic of Wilkerson butte, upper Gediz Vallis ridge, “Fascination Turret,” and “Pinnacle Ridge” in the distance. That’s a total of 138 Mastcam images! With remote sensing complete, the RSM will stow itself about 14:00 local time to make time for MAHLI imaging.
Between about 14:15 and 14:30 local time, MAHLI will take approximately 64 images of Epidote Peak and Milly’s Foot Path. Most of the images are being acquired in full shadow, so there is uniform lighting and saturation in the images. We’ll stow the arm at about 14:50 and begin our drive! This time we have an approximately 34-meter drive to the northwest (about 112 feet), bringing us almost all the way to the next dark-toned band in the sulfate unit. But no matter what happens with the drive, we’ll still do some remote science on the second sol including a Mastcam tau observation, a ChemCam LIBS in-the-blind (a.k.a AEGIS: Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science), and some Navcam movies of the sky and terrain.
Written by Natalie Moore, Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems
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Last Updated Nov 06, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
About 20,000 guests visited NASA’s tent at the Miramar Air Show in San Diego, California, Sept. 27-29, 2024. NASA Lee esta historia en Español aquí.
In September, the three NASA centers in California came together to share aerospace innovations with thousands of guests at the Miramar Air Show in San Diego, California. Agency experts talked about the exciting work NASA does while exploring the secrets of the universe for the benefit of all.
Under a large tent near the airfield, guests perused exhibits from different centers and projects, like a model of the Innovator rover or the Alta-X drone, from Sept. 27 through 29. Agency employees from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California; Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California; and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California guided guests through tours and presentations and shared messages about NASA missions.
“The airshow is about the people just as much as it is about the aircraft and technology,” said Derek Abramson, chief engineer for the Subscale Flight Research Laboratory at NASA Armstrong. “I met many new people, worked with an amazing team, and developed a comradery with other NASA centers, talking about what we do here as a cohesive organization.”
Experts like flight controls engineer Felipe Valdez shared the NASA mission with air show guests, and explained the novelty of airborne instruments like the Alta-X drone at the Miramar Air Show in San Diego, California, Sept. 27-29, 2024.NASA On Sept. 29, pilots from Armstrong joined the event to take photos with guests and answer questions from curious or enthusiastic patrons. One air show guest had a special moment with NASA pilot Jim Less.
“One of my favorite moments was connecting with a young man in his late teens who stopped by the exhibit tent numerous times, all in hopes of being able to meet Jim Less, our X-59 pilot,” said Kevin Rohrer, chief of Communications at NASA Armstrong. “It culminated with a great conversation with the two and Jim [Less] autographing a model of the X-59 aircraft the young man had been carrying around.”
“I look forward to this tradition continuing, if not at this venue, at some other event in California,” Rohrer continued. “We have a lot of minds hungry and passionate to learn more about all of NASA missions.”
The Miramar Air Show is an annual event that happens at the Miramar Air Base in San Diego, California.
Professionals like Leticha Hawkinson, center right, and Haig Arakelian, center left, shared learning and career opportunities for NASA enthusiasts visiting the Miramar Air Show in San Diego, California, Sept. 27-29, 2024.NASA Share
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Last Updated Oct 30, 2024 EditorDede DiniusContactErica HeimLocationArmstrong Flight Research Center Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:00:23 From 7 until 13 October 2024, ESA/NASA’s SOHO spacecraft recorded Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS), the second brightest comet it has ever seen. Meanwhile, large amounts of material were being spewed out by the Sun (covered in the centre), and planet Mercury is visible to the left.
The comet’s nucleus is clearly visible, surrounded by a dusty coma and trailing an impressively long tail. SOHO sees the large dust tail edge-on, curving in on itself as it is pushed outward by solar wind.
At the end of the video you can also see a rare phenomenon known as an ‘anti-tail’: a long, thin line that points towards the Sun. This tail is an optical illusion coming from SOHO getting an edge-on view of the larger cometary dust particles that accumulate in the comet’s orbital plane.
Comet C/2023 A3 was seen for the first time early last year. It most likely came from the distant Oort cloud, and the last time this comet flew through the inner Solar System (if ever) was at least 80 000 years ago.
The comet reached an estimated peak brightness just beyond –4 magnitude. (The more negative the visual magnitude value, the brighter the object.) Of the more than 5000 comets SOHO has seen flying past the Sun, only Comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught) was brighter, with a visual magnitude of –5.5.
SOHO’s location between the Sun and Earth gave it a front-row seat, but the same comet has been visible from Earth every evening since 12 October 2024. Throughout October, as the comet moves farther away from the Sun, it will gradually grow fainter and rise higher up in the western sky.
The week that SOHO watched Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS was also a wild one in terms of space weather. The Sun unleashed no less than 4 X-class flares (the highest intensity type of flare), 28 medium-intensity M-class flares, and 31 coronal mass ejections – the latter being visible as white clouds of material in the video. All this activity led to two geomagnetic storms on Earth, resulting in beautiful auroras lighting up the night sky.
SOHO, short for Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, is a joint ESA-NASA mission to study the Sun. For almost 29 years now, it has been watching the Sun itself as well as the much fainter light coming from the Sun’s outer atmosphere, called the solar corona. The data shown in this video were taken by the LASCO C3 coronagraph instrument.
Special thanks to Simeon Schmauß, who processed the raw data to create this impressive video. For comparison, here is a video of the comet with more standard data processing – the comet is so bright that it partially saturated SOHO’s sensor.
What types of comets are there?
How are comets named?
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