The European Space Agency says its Rosetta spacecraft has finally crash-landed on its comet.
Scientists at the control centre in Darmstadt clapped and hugged after screens showed the loss of signal when Rosetta touched down on the space rock, known as “67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko”.
Euronews correspondent Jeremy Wilks met four of the key players behind the Rosetta adventure.
It’s over!! ROSETTA is no more— Jeremy Wilks (@WilksJeremy) September 30, 2016
Jeremy Wilks, Euronews:
“There we go, that’s the end, the Rosetta mission has ended. The spacecraft is now right down there on the surface of the comet, and it’s not coming back. I’m here with some of the people who have been behind this mission from the very beginning. So how do you feel, Matt Taylor now?
Just wow https://t.co/cCfrJ3rt14— Matt Taylor (@mggtTaylor) September 30, 2016
Matt Taylor, Rosetta Project Scientist, ESA:
“It’s bittersweet today. We’ve lost something that’s sort of our life, we’ve lost a family member. But we know that we have all of the pieces of the puzzle to go forward and solve the mysteries of the solar system with Rosetta, which is what we were supposed to do. It’s about science, now let’s have that continue. But it’s still sad that we’ve lost a family member.”
Rosetta data is coming down live now, so the team is hard at work. #cometlanding https://t.co/or0V6Dv6mF— Jeremy Wilks (@WilksJeremy) September 30, 2016
Jeremy Wilks:
“Just to your right is Mohammed Ramy El-Maarry, who is one of the team that works on those images, those fantastic images that we get of the surface of the comet. What’s going to happen now with all of this science that you’ve got?
#CometLanding: Mohamed Ramy El-Maarry unibern is analyzing the first close-up images of #Chury ESA_Rosetta: http://t.co/FmObEgBdHk. — Universität Bern (@unibern) July 15, 2015
Mohamed Ramy El-Maarry, OSIRIS camera scientist, University of Bern
“Well, first of all we need to make sure that these images are to the best quality possible. It’s going to be very interesting for us, because we’re going to be able to look at these images and compare them, for example, with what we had for instance from the ROLIS camera that we had on the Philae lander while it was landing. It was very similar terrain but a different location. And we’ll be able to say something about the degree of homogeneity of this mobile dusty unit (he means the comet!).”
Animation of Rosetta’s final hours #CometLanding pic.twitter.com/TpPdk2EY4z— Jeremy Wilks (@WilksJeremy) September 27, 2016
Jeremy Wilks:
“Marvellous. And actually over here – I’m going to come back to you in a second – but over here we have the younger generation of the Rosetta experience, the big experience, and we’ve got the older generation, Roger-Maurice Bonnet, who was there right at the beginning. Tell us about the beginning of Rosetta.”
Roger-Maurice Bonnet nous parle avec émotion de la conception et du déroulement de la mission ESA_Rosetta #Merc