Another comet, another mission by the European Space Agency

Saima Baig astronomy, News, Science
a new mission by ESA to a intercept a comet
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In 2014, the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully launched Rosetta to 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and we all held our breaths as its lander Philae made its way to the comet. Philae did not last long but it sent back a lot of data and Rosetta continued orbiting the comet, ending its mission on 30 September 2016.

Now, ESA has announced another mission called the Comet Interceptor, which will aim to catch and study a comet approaching the Sun from the Oort cloud (from the outer reached of the Solar System). The Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, UK will lead the scientific aspect of the mission.

At the moment it is at the conceptual stage and entails a 3 in 1 probe, including a mothership and two smaller daughter craft, which will separate near the comet to conduct different but complementary studies, at the total cost of €150m.

A fascinating aspect is that the Interceptor is that it will be launched on the same rocket as Esa’s Ariel space telescope in the next decade or so. Ariel will be positioned about 1.5 million km from Earth and will study distant stars and their planets. At the same time it will also serve as a parking bay for any new mission. This is what the Interceptor will do, park itself by the Ariel telescope and wait for any comet to approach from the Oort cloud and fly by it when it does.

Image: Free-Photos from Pixabay

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am a Chartered Environmentalist from the Royal Society for the Environment, UK and co-owner of DoLocal Digital Marketing Agency Ltd, with a Master of Environmental Management from Yale University, an MBA in Finance, and a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Mathematics. I am passionate about science, history and environment and love to create content on these topics.

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  3. Where is the Oort cloud? The comets in the Oort cloud are at distances of 50,000 to 100,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. That is 1,000 times further away from the Sun than Pluto is and about one fourth the distance to the nearest star.

  4. Where is the Oort cloud ? The comets in the Oort cloud are at distances of 50,000 to 100,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. That is 1,000 times further …

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