Science and Space

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Europe’s Space Programme

Rosetta, Europe’s spacecraft to land on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is now travelling towards Jupiter’s orbit where it will meet with its target. Once near the giant planet, Rosetta will attempt to land on Comet 67P.

The stakes for Rosetta are high: the scientific breakthroughs have to be big enough to convince a skeptical public that the expense was worth it, and the execution of the mission has to be seamless enough to convince ESA’s competitors and collaborators that Europe is in the space game to stay.

Apart from Rosetta, other ESA crafts are scheduled to make a number of stops throughout the solar system over the next few years. The Cassini/Huygens, a joint NASA-ESA craft is to land on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, next year.

Then there’s Venus Express, which will investigate the planet’s super-hot surface and thick, heavy atmosphere, which is 96% carbon dioxide.

Europe is also moving ahead with the Columbus science laboratory, its biggest single contribution to the International Space Station, and further down the road are projects for the advanced study of gravitational waves and cosmic microwave background radiation.

But the greatest of all ESA missions is Aurora. Now in an initial three-year preparatory stage, Aurora is laying the groundwork for the next steps in the human exploration of space. With a European human landing on Mars in 30 years as Aurora’s ultimate goal, EADS Space Transportation, a Bremen-headquartered firm that makes space vehicles and components, is in the initial stages of exploring a Mars Sample Return mission, which would land a craft on Mars and return a small capsule with Martian surface samples to Earth.

posted by: kyawoo at 11:10 | link | comments |
unmanned missions

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