Today, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced the extension of the Rosetta mission, which will now end in September 2016, with the denouement of the space probe landing on the surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a comet originally from the Kuiper belt, which Rosetta has been tracking since 2014.
The June 23 confirmation of the spacecraft's continued mission was a pleasant surprise for scientists working on the project, given that funding for the mission had previously been approved for up until December 2015.
"We'll be able to monitor the decline in the comet's activity as we move away from the sun again, and we'll have the opportunity to fly closer to the comet to continue collecting more unique data," remarked project scientist Matt Taylor in a press statement issued by ESA. "By comparing detailed 'before and after' data, we'll have a much better understanding of how comets evolve during their lifetimes," he added.
Launched in 2004, the imperative of the Rosetta mission is to observe and document how a comet's activity ebbs and flows — in this case, the activity of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which orbits the sun every 6.5 years. The Rosetta spacecraft deployed the robotic probe Philae in November 2014, which was the first lander in history to set foot on a comet's surface. While the probe went into a seven-month period of hibernation after landing, Philae reactivated earlier this month, sending out a pair of radio transmissions two minutes each in length.
See more about the Rosetta mission in the video below.
