What is Rosetta Doing?

Image created using Canva by Matthew Bird
"Rosetta - comet fly-by" by DLR - http://www.flickr.com/photos/dlr_de/11962922525/.
Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The spacecraft, Rosetta, has been in the news a lot recently. It has recently been woken up after a 31-month hibernation in January this year. Launched in 2004, this mission has had a lot of coverage.

You likely know it has something to do with a comet, so let's be curious and ask, 'what is Rosetta doing?'


Rosetta is a spacecraft owned by the European Space Agency and was launched 10 years ago. In that time it has travelled 6.4 billion miles including several orbits of the sun, and using Earth and Mars as a giant planetary slingshot!

So, what's all this hassle about? The aim of the Rosetta mission is to study in great detail Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (catchy name) which has a year of 6.45 years and a day of 12.7 hours. Never before has a comet been studied in such detail. Already we have the best image of a comet up close:

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by Rosetta's OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on 3 August 2014 from a distance of 285 km. The image resolution is 5.3 metres/pixel.

Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

The ultimate aim is to release a lander, Philae on to the surface to work out exactly what it is made from. Specifically, we want to know if it has water and certain carbon-based molecules. Why do we want to know about those in particular? Well, it is hypothesised a comet similar to 67P/C-G may have brought the key building blocks for life (or the building blocks of those building blocks) to the early Earth.

It is thought that comets contain the same material as the early solar system, so if water and carbon-based molecules are found on the comet then it would suggest that there could have been comets with those molecules at the time, giving more strength to the hypothesis.

But until we can send a lander down, Rosetta will escort the comet around the sun using a series of complex manoeuvres including a triangular orbit around the comet.

Curious Fact

The craft is named Rosetta after the Rosetta Stone which helped decipher hieroglyphics. It is so named as Rosetta will help decipher comet chemistry.

What do you think to the Rosetta Mission? Let me know in the comments below. If you enjoyed this post you can share it using the links to the left. You can follow It Is All Science using the links to the right.

Remember, it is all science. So, let's be curious.

p.s. I am on holiday now, so there won't be any new posts for around 2 weeks. Feel free to post in the comments and via social media any topics you'd like covered in a future post.