Sentences with phrase «on a comet as»

Philae — the first spacecraft to ever land on a comet as part of the Rosetta mission — has gone silent again, and scientists fear that it may have stopped communicating for good.

For months at a time, uninterrupted, someone or some spacecraft had eyes on the comet as it fell from beyond the orbit of Jupiter to the doorstep of the sun itself.

Not exact matches

This feeling is familiar to anyone who has drifted over a hill on a roller coaster or flown on a parabolic «zero - gravity» flight — often referred to as a «vomit comet» ride because of the intense nausea the experience can trigger.

To give investors confidence again, someone needs to be empowered to run Tesla's factory as a full - time job they actually like — not one they're willing to do between building high - speed trains, or rockets, or riding a roadster to Mars on an intergalactic road paved with comet cocaine, while talking themselves out of a fortune.

However, the Rosina mass spectrometer aboard Rosetta found that the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in the comet is far greater than that found on Earth, adding to the growing body of evidence that the water on Earth was delivered not by comets, as previously thought, but by asteroids.

You mention global myths of a great flood as supporting evidence, but even the article only states,» [a] lmost every culture has a legend about a great flood, and — with a little reading between the lines — many of them mention something like a comet on a collision course with Earth just before the disaster.»

Still, Chapman says, he would not be surprised to see water ice on asteroids, adding that the distinction between comets, traditionally considered to be icy, and asteroids, which have been largely thought of as rocky, is becoming increasingly blurred.

The three - day observations show that the comet shards brighten and dim as icy patches on their surfaces rotate into and out of sunlight.

Earlier, in 2000 and 2002, the craft positioned aerogel collectors on the opposite side of the arm to snare particles of interstellar dust, suspected to be as small as one - tenth the size of comet grains.

New analyses of lander data reveal the comet as uniform on the inside, but full of variety on the outside.

She has traveled to the South Pole as part of a U.S. National Science Foundation program for journalists and been a passenger on NASA's infamous vomit comet.

If ESA discovers that J is unsuitable between now and November, they have selected a backup site, C. Landing on this spot would give Philae a view of the comet's «neck», which is of high scientific interest, but J won out as the easier place to touch down.

After sunset on those dates the comet will be low down in the west and appear as a misty patch not far from the crescent Moon.

However, the legacy of the comet will go on for years as scientists analyze the tremendous data set collected during ISON's journey.

Studying the nucleus temperature and evolution of the coma and tail provides information on how the comet evolves as it approaches and leaves the vicinity of the sun, and addresses questions about why that happens.

In the European Space Agency's (ESA's) control room in Darmstadt, Germany, the mood was anxious and all eyes were glued to the mission control computer screens as a spidery, three - legged lander named Philae detached from its parent spacecraft, Rosetta, and made its slow descent to the surface of a comet — and cheers and hugging broke out on 12 November when the control room received confirmation that the lander had arrived.

The overall illumination conditions could improve for another couple months, as comet 67P approaches perihelion on 13 August, the closest point in its orbit around the sun.

The long exposure means we can see details on the comet's surface, along with jets of gas emerging as it heats up on its journey towards the sun.

Initial projects (both theoretical and practical) include seeking evidence for the existence of biomolecules and cells in the upper atmosphere, as well as in comets and interstellar dust; looking for evidence of biological molecules and processes in material recovered from space; and investigating the effect of space conditions on living systems.

As of press time, Rosetta is scheduled to drop a lander, named Philae, in mid-November onto a site on the comet's surface named Agilkia — another space exploration first.

The existence of the craters, as well as the discovery of steep cliffs and pinnacles on the comet's landscape, imply that Wild 2 is a cohesive structure as opposed to a loosely connected rubble pile.

Although the consequences are roughly comparable in either case, an important difference is that objects in the solar system that circle far away from the sun on long - period orbits before returning, such as comets, would hit the earth at much greater velocities than close - orbiting (short - period) bodies, such as asteroids.

Using data captured by ALMA in Chile and from the ROSINA instrument on ESA's Rosetta mission, a team of astronomers has found faint traces of the chemical compound [Freon - 40]--(CH3Cl), also known as methyl chloride and chloromethane, around both the infant star system IRAS 16293 - 2422, about 400 light - years away, and the famous comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko (67P / C - G) in our own Solar System.

Prematurely billed by the tabloids as the «killer comet» about to strike Earth, Hale - Bopp is fortunately not on a collision course with us.

Water delivery via asteroids or comets is likely taking place in many other planetary systems, just as it happened on Earth, new research strongly suggests.

DARMSTADT, GERMANY — The Rosetta orbiter on Wednesday dropped a spidery, three - legged robot the size of a small refrigerator and watched as it tentatively set down on a comet — the first time that the surface of these primordial balls of dust and ice has ever been explored.

«Actin can function as a track for myosin, or as a motor on its own via this comet tail mechanism.»

A camera on Rosetta captures the Philae lander as it falls to the surface of comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko.

DARMSTADT, GERMANY — On Wednesday, 12 November, the Rosetta spacecraft's Philae probe is set to attempt an historic landing on a comet, known as 67P / Churyumov - GerasimenkOn Wednesday, 12 November, the Rosetta spacecraft's Philae probe is set to attempt an historic landing on a comet, known as 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenkon a comet, known as 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko.

As they rotate, radiation from the sun cooks simpler chemicals on the comet into prebiotic molecules.

Radar data helped locate an approximate position for its final resting spot — somewhere just within the rim of the large crater on the head of the duck - shaped comet, what was once known as landing site «B.» Holger Sierks, principal investigator for the orbiter's camera, was waiting for images to be downloaded to Earth tonight that he thought would contain the lander.

Plus, Myrtha Hässig discusses the surprising heterogeneity of comet 67P as part of Science's special issue on the Rosetta spacecraft.

Shermer's article is a shallow and tendentious treatment of a complex subject that does not take proper account of rebuttals to critical attacks on the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, in which a comet strike more than 12,000 years ago caused the megafaunal extinction in North America, and misrepresents the state of the argument around my theory that this event wiped out an advanced human society as well.

It envisions the great reshuffling as a brief, violent affair that not only put the outer planets where they are today but also created the Kuiper belt of small icy bodies beyond Neptune, gave the planets scores of oddly orbiting moons, and bombarded the solar system with a rain of asteroids and comets so fierce that it would have cooked all but the deepest subterranean life on early Earth.

On average, material blasted across Mercury's surface by relatively recent impacts of comets, asteroids, and other small bodies reflects only two - thirds as much light as freshly excavated material on the moon, previous studies have showOn average, material blasted across Mercury's surface by relatively recent impacts of comets, asteroids, and other small bodies reflects only two - thirds as much light as freshly excavated material on the moon, previous studies have showon the moon, previous studies have shown.

However, comets do not have a dense, permanent atmosphere as on Earth.

That means the source of the water on the Moon is primitive meteorites, not comets as some scientists thought.

They are found on the lobes of the comet as well as on the neck that connects them.

Comet C / 2011 N3 is fondly remembered as the first comet ever captured on camera as it succumbed within the sun.

Chris Carr of Imperial College London, the principal investigator for a suite of instruments called the Rosetta Plasma Consortium, says he hopes theirs may be the first on the spacecraft to actually detect the comet as solar wind begins to blow gas off its surface and the sun's ultraviolet light ionizes it, leaving a trail of plasma.

Incoming data on the comet's mass, density and surface will help ESA narrow the choice to as many as five possible zones, each 600 metres across.

The first, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, will rely on a network of four telescopes in Hawaii to hunt for small, fast - moving, nearby objects such as asteroids, comets, and bodies in the Kuiper belt.

COVER View of a cliff and gravel field on the small lobe of comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko from a distance of 8 kilometers to the surface, as seen by Rosetta / OSIRIS.

The Compact Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) observed comet C / 2013 A1 Siding Spring as the comet sped close to Mars on Oct. 19.

Any delays will make landing much trickier as the comet becomes increasingly active on its approach to the sun.

The cratering record on the moon provides a proxy for similar impacts by interplanetary debris such as comets and asteroids on Earth, the effects of which have largely been erased by billions of years of erosion and geologic activity.

A single, intact asteroid or comet would punch right through the ring, but a good - size comet, if broken apart as Shoemaker - Levy 9 was, could rain down on the rings with enough force to generate a sufficient tilt.

Those results set the age boundary for the oldest terrains on Mercury to be contemporary with the so - called Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB), a period of intense asteroid and comet impacts recorded in lunar and asteroidal rocks and by the numerous craters on the Moon, Earth, and Mars, as well as Mercury.

On the outskirts of the solar system swarms a vast cloud of comets, influenced almost as much by other stars as by our sun.

The consortium instruments are designed to study a number of phenomena, including the interaction of 67P / C - G with the solar wind, a continuous stream of plasma emitted by the sun; changes of activity on the comet; the structure and dynamics of the comet's tenuous plasma atmosphere, known as the coma; and the physical properties of the comet's nucleus and surface.