Rosetta: chasing and catching a comet
Can you land on a moving comet? How long before do you have to start chasing it?
Man on the moon, Curiosity on Mars and now Philae on the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, 10 years after being launched into space.
The Rosetta Mission is the third cornerstone mission of the ESA programme Horizon 2000. The aim of the mission is to map the comet 67-P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by remote sensing, to examine its environment in situ and its evolution in the inner solar system.
The lander Philae is the first device to land on a comet and perform in-situ science on the surface. Launched in March 2004 and after a number of gravity assists and various asteroid fly –bys, the spacecraft entered deep space hibernation in June 2011. Nearly 10 years after launch on 20th January 2014 at 10:00 UTC the spacecraft woke up from hibernation, and subsequently successfully entered into orbit around the comet and deployed Philae to the surface.
Philae had only a few hours of activity on the comet before it ran out of juice. However, it was enough time to collect soil and take several measurements of the comet’s atmosphere. In this episode of Science & Cocktails, Matt Taylor, project scientist on the Rosetta mission, will give the low down of the mission so far.
Aferwards, while Philae is in space and cocktails are being served, Tabula Rasa will be playing. Together they have the task, through the music and improvisations, to discuss any questions which underlie Jonas Due’s compositions. The musicians are hand picked from the city BROAD (genre) music environment, in order to adapt the compositions with great diversity where free improvisations go hand in hand with sharp noted node material and graphical batch trips.
Talk by
Matt Taylor
Matt Taylor’s research has focused on space plasma measurements, working in Europe and the US on the four spacecraft ESA Cluster mission, leading to a post at the European Space Agency which started in 2005 working as the project scientist for Cluster and the ESA-China Double star mission. His studies have focused on energetic particle dynamics in near-Earth space and in the interaction of the Sun’s solar wind with the Earths magnetic field, particularly focusing on how boundary layer interactions evolve, leading to 70 first or co-authored papers. Most recently he was appointed the Project Scientist on the Rosetta mission.
Music by
Tabula Rasa
Tabula Rasa is a jazz sextet consisting of four horns, drums and bass composed by the musicians Szymon Pimpon (Drums), Jędrzej Lagodzinski (Tenor sax/Bary sax), Wietse Voermans (Alto sax), Christian Larsen (Trombone), Hannes Jonsson (Double Bass) and Jonas I Due (Trumpet/flygenhorn/composition).
