The European space Agency (ESA) announced that the Rosetta mission to study comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will end on 30 September this year.
Recall that the launch of Rosetta was held in March 2004. In the summer of 2014, the spacecraft reached comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko and began its study. In November of the same year, on the surface of a space object was dropped the Philae probe, but because of a failed landing, he was in the shade for 57 hours ran out of energy by going into sleep mode. Alas, Philae to return to work and failed.
In the two years of study the comet station Rosetta gave the Earth a huge amount of important scientific information and a lot of great pictures. But now the device increasingly moves away from the Sun, leading to reduced energy required to maintain operation of onboard systems. In the coming months the solar panels will simply cease to meet the needs of the Rosetta energy.
In such a situation, the experts decided not to make the station into a long hibernation from which it may not enter. Instead, Rosetta at the end of September will be launched on the surface of the comet. During this procedure, the unit will be able to produce a number of unique measurements, and also to image the comet in high resolution. This data station time to pass on the Ground to the contact with the space object: in the moment of impact, the communication will stop, as well as the scientific mission Rosetta.
