[meteorite-list] Rosetta's Comet: Expect the Unexpected

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_s_comet_expect_the_unexpected

Rosetta's comet: expect the unexpected
European Space Agency
19 June 2014

An image snapped earlier this month by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft shows 
its target comet has quietened, demonstrating the unpredictable nature 
of these enigmatic objects.

The picture was captured on 4 June by Rosetta's scientific camera, and 
is the most recent full-resolution image from the narrow-angle sensor. 
It has been used to help fine-tune Rosetta's navigation towards comet 
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which was 430 000 km away at the time.

Strikingly, there is no longer any sign of the extended dust cloud that 
was seen developing around nucleus at the end of April and into May, as 
shown in our last image release. Indeed, monitoring of the comet has shown 
a significant drop in its brightness since then.

"The comet is now almost within our reach - and teaching us to expect 
the unexpected," says the camera's Principal Investigator Holger Sierks 
from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany.

"After its onset of activity at the end April, our images are currently 
showing a comet back at rest."

[Image]
Comet on 30 April

While it is not uncommon for comets to display varying levels of activity, 
it is the first time that scientists have witnessed changes in dust production 
from such a close distance.

A comet's "coma" develops as it moves along its orbit progressively closer 
to the Sun, the increasing warmth causing surface ices to sublimate and 
gas to escape from its rock-ice nucleus. 

As the gas flows away from the nucleus, it also carries a cloud of tiny 
dust particles out into space, which slowly expands to create the coma.

The warming continues and activity rises as the comet moves ever closer 
to the Sun. Eventually, pressure from the solar wind causes some of the 
material to stream out into a long tail.

As comets are non-spherical and lumpy, this process is often unpredictable, 
with activity waxing and waning as they warm. The observations made over 
the six weeks from the end of April to early June show just how quickly 
the conditions at a comet can change.

Since Rosetta's instruments were reactivated earlier this year after a 
long hibernation, the scientific and navigation cameras have been regularly 
acquiring images to help define Rosetta's trajectory to the comet.

Using this information, the spacecraft has been making a series of manoeuvres 
that will slowly bring it in line with the comet before their rendezvous 
in the first week of August.

Four manoeuvres have been completed already - the most recent was yesterday 
- with six more to go. The last in the sequence is planned for 6 August, 
when Rosetta will be 100 km from the comet and will embark on a series 
of complex manoeuvres to bring it closer still.

But today, even six weeks and about 165 000 km out, Rosetta's science 
instruments have already started collecting data on the comet's environment 
and its evolution.  

For example, Rosetta is capable of measuring the coma and determining 
the rates at which water and gases such as carbon dioxide are being produced, 
and how those rates change with time. These measurements will provide 
insight into the chemical makeup of the comet's surface and interior.

The plasma environment of the comet can also be assessed as the coma develops 
and interacts with particles in the solar wind.

Later, as it gets even closer, Rosetta will start collecting gas and dust 
particles from the coma, and analysing them in its miniaturised onboard 
laboratories.

"It's great to have started regularly receiving science data, especially 
after a long 10 year journey towards our destination," says Matt Taylor, 
ESA's Rosetta project scientist. "The variable activity of the comet shows 
it definitely has personality, which makes us all the more eager to get 
there to learn just how it ticks."

Today, the roughly 4 km-wide comet scales to about one pixel in the narrow-angle 
camera - meaning no details of the nucleus can be discerned. But within 
a few weeks, Rosetta will be close enough to see far more: by early July, 
it should span five pixels and by the start of August, 500 pixels.

With that in mind, we will now begin publishing images on a more regular 
basis. The next image is foreseen on or around 3 July, and then on a weekly 
basis until rendezvous on 6 August. The images will be published in the 
Rosetta image gallery and via the Rosetta mission blog.

One thing seems certain: as Rosetta comes ever closer to its destination, 
more exciting surprises surely await us.