From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Thu Feb 19 2004 - 21:11:43 PST
>From: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory <info_at_jpl.nasa.gov>
>Reply-To: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory <info_at_jpl.nasa.gov>
>To: ljk4_at_msn.com
>Subject: Spacecraft to Launch, Designed to Harpoon Cosmic 'Moby Dick'
>Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 16:27:01 -0600
>
>DC Agle (818) 393-9011
>Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
>
>Donald Savage (202) 358-1727
>NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
>
>Release: 2004-065 February 19, 2004
>
>Spacecraft to Launch, Designed to Harpoon Cosmic 'Moby Dick'
>
>Like the massive white whale in Herman Melville's 1851
>classic "Moby Dick," comets have long been considered swift,
>elusive harbingers of change. So it should be of little
>surprise that one of the best ways for scientists to study
>the mysteries of comets is to harpoon one.
>
>The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft is scheduled
>to lift off on Feb. 26, 2004, at 2:16 am Eastern time, from
>the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, on the northeastern
>coast of South America. The launch will be the beginning of
>a ten-and-a-half year odyssey to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko
>that includes flybys of Mars (2007) and the Earth (2005,
>2007 and 2009).
>
>Among the instruments aboard the Rosetta spacecraft are
>three instruments funded by NASA and a key component of a
>fourth. The NASA instruments will examine Churyumov-
>Gerasimenko from the orbiter.
>
>"This comet has only about three-hundred-thousandths the
>gravity of Earth," said Dr. Claudia Alexander, project
>scientist for the U.S. role in the mission, from NASA's Jet
>Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, Calif. "The Rosetta
>spacecraft will be able to make observations from as close
>as 2 kilometers (1.2 miles). The data from our state-of-the-
>art instruments will be amazing," she added.
>
>Rosetta will reach Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a four-kilometer-
>diameter (2.5-mile) comet, in May 2014. When this rendezvous
>occurs, Churyumov-Gerasimenko will be about three times as
>far from the sun as Earth is. Over the next 18 months
>Rosetta will study how the comet changes as it moves closer
>to the sun. In November 2014, Rosetta will drop its
>experiment-laden, harpoon-firing lander on Churyumov-
>Gerasimenko's icy nucleus.
>
>"What you have to understand is that comets are primordial
>remnants of the early solar system," explained Dr. Paul
>Weissman of JPL. "They are the keys to understanding the way
>the whole solar system, our Earth, and how even we came into
>being. And with Rosetta we will be able to observe, study
>and analyze this primordial material up close for more than
>a year," he said.
>
>JPL supplied the Microwave Instrument for Rosetta Orbiter,
>the first of its type on any interplanetary mission. This
>instrument can reveal the abundances of selected gases,
>their temperatures, the speed at which they are coming off the
>nucleus, and the temperature of the nucleus. Scientists will
>use the instrument to monitor changes in how vapors are
>released from the nucleus as the coma and tail grow. They
>will be studying water, carbon monoxide, ammonia and
>methanol, four of the most abundant gases from comets. Dr.
>Samuel Gulkis of JPL's Earth and Space Sciences Division is
>principal investigator.
>
>The Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio,
>supplied two NASA instruments for Rosetta. One is an imaging
>telescope/spectrometer capable of analyzing the composition
>both of gases released by the comet and of the comet's
>surface. A goal of scientists using the instrument is to learn about
>the temperatures at which comets form and evolve, by
>determining the relative abundance of noble gases, such as
>helium, neon and argon. Principal investigator for the
>ultraviolet instrument is Dr. Alan Stern of the institute's
>Space Studies Department in Bolder, Colo.
>
>Dr. James Burch, of the Institute's Instrumentation and
>Space Research Division, San Antonio, is principal
>investigator for Rosetta's Ion and Electron Spectrometer.
>This device will measure the environment of charged
>particles surrounding comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It will also study
>the interaction
>between that environment and the solar wind of charged
>particles speeding outward from the Sun.
>
>Key electronics for a fourth instrument, the Rosetta Orbiter
>Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis, have been
>supplied by Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, Palo
>Alto, Calif. This instrument will examine gases surrounding
>the comet.
>
>JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
>Pasadena, manages the microwave instrument for NASA's Office
>of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
>
>For information about the Rosetta mission visit:
>
>http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=lvkPT2sX_INO-3BCLCXxIg..
>
> -end-
>
>
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