Thursday 22 May 2014

ROSETTA INITIATES BIG BURN TOWARDS COMET

The European Space Agency's (Esa) Rosetta spacecraft has lit its thrusters for a near-eight-hour burn to put it on just the right path to meet up with Comet 67P/C-G in August.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27498534

There will be eight further manoeuvres, but yesterday's was the big one.

Rosetta is currently 500 million km from Earth. Comet 67P/C-G is travelling round the sun on a big loop that takes it out beyond the orbit of Jupiter and then back in to just inside the orbit of Mars.

Comment:  Plenty of chances for things to go wrong before the August rendezvous, but hopefully this exciting mission will be successful.

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