Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Rosetta Detects Water on its Target Comet

Rosetta Detects Water on its Target Comet:

Artist's impression (from 2002) of Rosetta orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Credit: ESA, image by AOES Medialab

Artist’s impression (from 2002) of Rosetta orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Credit: ESA, image by AOES Medialab
It’s no surprise that there is a lot of water in comets. The “dirty snowballs” (or dusty ice-balls, more accurately) are literally filled with the stuff, so much in fact it’s thought that comets played a major role in delivering water to Earth. But every comet is unique, and the more we learn about them the more we can understand the current state of our Solar System and piece together the history of our planet.

ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft is now entering the home stretch for its rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August. While it has already visually imaged the comet on a couple of occasions since waking from its hibernation, its instruments have now successfully identified water on 67P for the first time, from a distance of 360,000 km – about the distance between Earth and the Moon.

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Read the rest of Rosetta Detects Water on its Target Comet (318 words)


© Jason Major for Universe Today, 2014. |
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