Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2016

SMALL BODIES phenomena evidenced by a comet's nucleus before, during and af- ter the perihelion pas- sage. Via both the or- biter and the lander, the mission scientists were able to examine 67P/Churyumov-Gera- simenko in great de- tail, at different scales and different wave- lengths, and collect a large amount of data on its formation pro- cesses. Thus, it was fi- nally possible to give an answer to a ques- tion remained open for decades on wheth- er or not primordial comets were responsi- ble for bringing water to Earth. It turned out that they cannot have done so, or at least not to a significant extent, since the water present on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasi- menko (which is probably representative of the entire class) contains a percentage can be seen as historic in many respects. Besides being the first to have had a probe orbiting around a comet, it was also the first to release a lander, the small labora- tory Philae, which landed on its surface in November 2014 and remained, regretta- bly, active only for a few dozen hours. Ro- setta was also the first probe to follow the T he animation on the side shows the path followed by Ro- setta during the 10 days prior to its low speed im- pact onto 67P/ C-G, while the in- fographic below shows Philae and Rosetta’s land- ing sites. [ESA]