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The Rosetta mission orbiter science overview: the comet phase
Buratti, B. J.; Altobelli, N.; Taylor, M. G. G. T. +1 more
The international Rosetta mission was launched in 2004 and consists of the orbiter spacecraft Rosetta and the lander Philae. The aim of the mission is to map the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by remote sensing, and to examine its environment in situ and its evolution in the inner Solar System. Rosetta was the first spacecraft to rendezvous with …
D2O and HDS in the coma of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Altwegg, K.; Balsiger, H.; Berthelier, J. J. +12 more
The European Rosetta mission has been following comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for 2 years, studying the nucleus and coma in great detail. For most of these 2 years the Rosetta Orbiter Sensor for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) has analysed the volatile part of the coma. With its high mass resolution and sensitivity it was able to not only dete…
The 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko observation campaign in support of the Rosetta mission
Lasue, J.; Villanueva, G. L.; Lara, L. M. +112 more
We present a summary of the campaign of remote observations that supported the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission. Telescopes across the globe (and in space) followed comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from before Rosetta's arrival until nearly the end of the mission in September 2016. These provided essential data for mission planning, large-sc…
Cometary dust: the diversity of primitive refractory grains
Wooden, D. H.; Ishii, H. A.; Zolensky, M. E.
Comet dust is primitive and shows significant diversity. Our knowledge of the properties of primitive cometary particles has expanded significantly through microscale investigations of cosmic dust samples (anhydrous interplanetary dust particles (IDPs), chondritic porous (CP) IDPs and UltraCarbonaceous Antarctic micrometeorites, Stardust and Roset…
The Philae lander mission and science overview
Krüger, Harald; Bibring, Jean-Pierre; Mottola, Stefano +12 more
The Philae lander accomplished the first soft landing and the first scientific experiments of a human-made spacecraft on the surface of a comet. Planned, expected and unexpected activities and events happened during the descent, the touch-downs, the hopping across and the stay and operations on the surface. The key results were obtained during 12-…
SOHO comets: 20 years and 3000 objects later
Knight, Matthew M.; Battams, Karl
We present a summary of the more than 3000 sungrazing and near-Sun comets discovered in coronagraph images returned by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), since its launch in December 1995. We address each of the four main populations of objects observed by SOHO: Kreutz (sungrazing) group, Meyer group, Marsden and Kracht (96P-family) gr…
Interaction of the solar wind with comets: a Rosetta perspective
Glassmeier, Karl-Heinz
The Rosetta mission provides an unprecedented possibility to study the interaction of comets with the solar wind. As the spacecraft accompanies comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from its very low-activity stage through its perihelion phase, the physics of mass loading is witnessed for various activity levels of the nucleus. While observations at oth…
Asteroid-comet continuum objects in the solar system
Hsieh, Henry H.
In this review presented at the Royal Society meeting, `Cometary science after Rosetta', I present an overview of studies of small solar system objects that exhibit properties of both asteroids and comets (with a focus on so-called active asteroids). Sometimes referred to as `transition objects', these bodies are perhaps more appropriately describ…
Comets: looking ahead
A'Hearn, Michael F.
We outline the key questions about comets that must be answered in order to understand cometary formation in the context of the protoplanetary disc and the role of comets in the formation and evolution of the solar system. We then discuss the new understanding of comets from Rosetta and from other recent advances, including work presented by other…
Mechanical and electrostatic experiments with dust particles collected in the inner coma of comet 67P by COSIMA onboard Rosetta
Altobelli, Nicolas; Haerendel, Gerhard; Langevin, Yves +30 more
The in situ cometary dust particle instrument COSIMA (COmetary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser) onboard ESA's Rosetta mission has collected about 31 000 dust particles in the inner coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko since August 2014. The particles are identified by optical microscope imaging and analysed by time-of-flight secondary ion mass spec…