The mission of mapping a 3D comet for the first time, with the participation of Imperial academics, has been officially approved by the European Space Agency.
The Comet Interceptor mission was officially approved by the European Space Agency (ESA) at a meeting in Madrid today, as it moves from the design phase to the implementation phase.
The entire team at Imperial was overjoyed. Comet Interceptor is the first mission to investigate a comet from three different points simultaneously.
Professor Marina Galland
Scheduled for launch in 2029, the mission will see one main spacecraft (built by the European Space Agency) and two probe robots – one from the European Space Agency and one from the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) – travel to and map the ascomet. unknown. in three dimensions.
The spacecraft will travel a million miles from Earth to wait for a “pure” comet to enter the inner solar system for the first time. It will then deploy probes to collect data and map the comet.
A team from the Imperial Physics Department led the instrument aboard the ESA probe, which will fly close to the comet. The Fluxgate Magnetometer (FGM), funded by the UK Space Agency, will provide high-resolution, high-resolution measurements of the strength and direction of the comet’s magnetic field.
pure guilt pursuit
The Imperial team was led by Professor Marina Galland, with Instrumentation Director Emmanuel Cupido, engineering supervisor Chris Carr and instrumentation engineer Dr. Irene Ruiz Rodriguez, working with partners in Austria.
Professor Galland said: “Good to hear about message adoption. The entire team at Imperial was overjoyed. Comet Interceptor is the first mission to investigate a comet from three different points simultaneously. The magnetometer is the only instrument in the three. spacecraft: complete with Plasma and particle measurements, it will provide an unprecedented 3D view of the original comet’s interactions with the solar wind.”
The Comet Interceptor will advance our understanding of comet evolution and also help solve the mysteries of the universe. Comets are what remained when planetary systems formed and in every primordial body, information about the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago is stored.
Comet Interceptor, first proposed by a team led by the Mullard Space Science Laboratory of University College London (MSSL) and the University of Edinburgh, is the first mission to travel to a comet that has never encountered the inner solar system.
To do this, you need to launch and reach a fixed location about a million miles from Earth. There he will wait – perhaps for years – until astronomers on Earth find a suitable comet to intercept. The two probes will make their way closer to the comet’s core and send their data back to the main spacecraft.
ambush tactics
This new ambush tactic is the first of its kind. The trajectory of the three spacecraft, including two probes less than a meter in diameter, will likely only take a few hours, but could illuminate conditions that prevailed more than four billion years ago.
Previous missions have studied comets trapped in short-term orbits around the sun, meaning they have been significantly altered by our star’s light and heat. And breaking that mold, the Comet Interceptor will target the original comet in its first approach to the sun.
Scientists will likely target a comet moving from the Oort cloud — a collection of icy debris that lies roughly halfway between the Sun and the next closest star.
This debris was formed during the formation of the solar system but was soon thrown to its outer edge. Unlike more common comets, their surface will not be evaporated by solar energy – a process that causes dust to accumulate on top of the comet, obscuring its natural state.
Once the probes reach a pure comet, they will study and examine its chemical composition, with the sole aim of assessing whether a similar object has brought water to the planet in the past.
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