[meteorite-list] NASA Television to Provide Coverage of European Mission Comet Landing

[Ron Baalke]

November 7, 2014
     
NASA Television to Provide Coverage of European Mission Comet Landing

NASA Television and the agency's website will provide live coverage from 
9-11:30 a.m. EST (6-8:30 a.m. PST) of the European Space Agency (ESA) Rosetta 
mission's scheduled landing of a probe on a comet on Wednesday, Nov. 12.
NASA's live commentary will include excerpts of the ESA coverage and air from 
9-10 a.m. NASA will continue carrying ESA's commentary from 10-11:30 a.m. 
ESA's Philae (fee-LAY) lander is scheduled to touch down on comet 
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at 10:35 a.m. A signal confirming landing is 
expected at approximately 11:02 a.m.

After landing, Philae will obtain the first images ever taken from a comet's 
surface. It also will drill into the surface to study the composition and 
witness close up how a comet changes as its exposure to the sun varies. 
Philae can remain active on the surface for approximately two-and-a-half 
days. Its "mothership" is the Rosetta spacecraft that will remain in 
orbit around the comet through 2015. The orbiter will continue detailed 
studies of the comet as it approaches the sun and then moves away. NASA has 
three of the 16 instruments aboard the orbiter.

Comets are considered primitive building blocks of the solar system that are 
literally frozen in time. They may have played a part in "seeding" Earth with 
water and, possibly, the basic ingredients for life.

NASA TV streaming video, downlink and updated scheduling information is at:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

For more information on the U.S. instruments aboard Rosetta, visit:

http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov

ESA's live coverage of landing events will be streamed at:

http://www.esa.int/rosetta

More information about Rosetta is available at:

http://www.esa.int/rosetta

-end-

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov 

DC Agle/Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011 / 354-6278
agle at jpl.nasa.gov / guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov