PHILAE AND ROSETTA

Mumbai: I remember the afternoon of November 12 2014. I was keyed to my laptop and tuned to the ESA website watching the coverage of the Rosetta mission---the first ever touchdown of a spacecraft, called Philae on the surface of a comet--67P.

At that moment world space history was rocketing into a new exciting era and the flight director for this nail-biting mission was highly jovial Andrea Accamazzo, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the International Astronautical Congress in Jerusalem on October 13, 2015.

Watching the ESA coverage that afternoon was absolutely thrilling. Exciting was building up every moment and when the signal finally arrived that Philae had successfully landed on the comet after it detached from the mother craft, Rosetta, the atmosphere in the mission control room at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, turned into one of joy and excitement and there were exchange of congratulatory handshakes and embraces.The flight from Rosetta to the comet took seven hours.

The place where Philae touched down initially was called Agilkia. It was anything but a smooth landing because Philae's harpoons which were to hold the lander on the surface of the comet failed to operate for a variety of reasons. As a result Philae after bouncing around for about two hours at a height of 100 meters above the comet's surface, finally settled down in another area.

Despite the unexpected and erratic landing, the scientific results so far have been promising. For example, according to ESA, data obtained in the last one year has shown that the area were Philae landed is covered mainly by smooth deposits of fine-grained material.

There are also pits and hills with a steep slope on one side and shallow on the other. Also, the images have shown terraces and steep walls around the region where Philae landed. There are boulders strewn across the surface.

One of the most important discoveries was that there was oxygen in the comet.

ESA states that despite the bouncing, Philae has completed nearly 80 per cent of its science operations before falling into hiberation on November 15, 2014. Rosetta made contact with Philae on June 13, 2015, but only eight intermittent contacts were made upto July 9.

Mission teams today remain hopeful for re establishing contact with Philae, while looking ahead to next year's grand finale: making a controlled impact of the Rosetta orbiter on the comet.

Four days ago Rosetta tweeted: ``Now I'm around 200 kms from #67P again; there's a greater chance to hear @Philae2014.

Suspense once again builds up as one eagerly awaits the news about the contact being re established.