Sentences with phrase «orbit around comet»

Its «mothership» is the Rosetta spacecraft that will remain in orbit around the comet through 2015.

The European Space Agency's Rosetta probe has reached its final resting place after two years in orbit around comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko

Rosetta's continuous orbit around comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko is helping scientists figure out how life began on Earth — and heralds a new age of comet science.

The comet orbiter touched down on the surface of comet 67P / Churyumov — Gerasimenko at 7:19 a.m. Eastern and immediately shut down, bringing to an end a nearly 26 - month mission in orbit around the comet.

Not exact matches

In a paper published in 1692, Edmond Halley, later famed for charting the orbit of his eponymous comet, argued that Earth was mostly hollow, consisting of three concentric shells rotating around a core.

On 30 September, the European Space Agency probe landed on comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko, in a spectacular finish to its two years spent in orbit around the space rock.

As the comet traveled across the system, it was deflected by the planets, like a ball bouncing around in a pinball machine, until Jupiter's gravity set its current orbit, Jewitt said.

Earth and the other planets of our solar system suffer occasional impacts when comets are disturbed from their orbits around the sun by the gravity of nearby stars and gas clouds.

«If the comet has an episode every six years, the equivalent of one orbit around the sun, then it will be gone in 150 years,» Jewitt said.

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.

There is a tendency to think that the solar system is a simple place, to assume that the planets rotate easily around the sun, the moons around the planets, and that comets zing in and out in curvaceous orbits.

Just weeks before the historic encounter of comet C / 2013 A1 (Siding Spring) with Mars in October 2014, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft entered orbit around the Red Planet.

Although the earth's orbit around the Sun is almost circular, most comets travel in orbits that are highly elongated ellipses.

The pulse also knocked the electron into a highly elliptical path around the nucleus, rather like a comet that orbits the Sun but spends most of its time far outside the Solar System.

The rocky debris, consisting of mostly sand - size particles, continues in an elongated orbit around the Sun close to that of its parent comet.

Meteor showers occur when the earth in its orbit around the Sun passes through debris left over from the disintegration of comets.

Brian Marsden of the Harvard - Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory has calculated that the comet is, at least temporarily, in orbit around Jupiter.

The comets are thought to be traveling around the star in a very long, eccentric orbit.

Rosetta has traveled 6.2 billion km in an attempt to do something never done before: to catch up with a comet, 67 P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko, as it speeds toward the sun and to go into orbit around it.

A shift in Jupiter's orbit around 4.5 billion years ago may have jarred the Kuiper Belt, flinging icy comets at the Earth.

Jupiter and Neptune may have collected their Trojans about 3.8 billion years ago, at a time when the orbits of these planets were shifting and their gravity was flinging vast numbers of comet - like objects around the solar system (see The solar system, but not as we know it).

The smaller debris / meteoroids produced get spread around the orbit quite quickly (read: centuries or millennia) by various physical effects (ejection speeds from the comet; radiation pressure; Poynting - Robertson effect; Yarkovsky effect).

Most comets travel in highly elliptical orbits around the Sun.

The modelling suggested that a Neptune - like planet actually formed much closer to Vega and was pushed by a Jupiter - like planet in an inner orbit out to its current wide orbit around 80 AUs away from Vega over about 56 million years, sweeping many comets out with it and causing the dust disk to become clumpy (Mark C. Wyatt, 2003).

On the other hand, the discovery of a brown dwarf companion in a wide orbit that could perturb dormant comets in an Oort Cloud around Epsilon Indi inwards towards the star's inner planetary regions may periodically shower an Earth - type, inner planet with catastrophic impacts.

Since a 2005 visit by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft, the short - period comet has completed more than one complete orbit around the Sun and approached the inner Solar System as close as the orbital distance of Mars.

The comet appears to have undergone visible changes, including the changes in the size and number of surface features such as smooth patches, pits, and craters, and the loss of ice vaporized by the Sun or blasted off its surface by the Solar Wind into its tail as well as failing back on the object like snow, so that it appears to shrink, on average, by 25 to 50 centimeters (9.2 to 19.7 inches) with each orbit around the Sun.

On November 4, 2010, NASA's EPOXI mission flew at a close distance of around 435 miles (or 700 kilometers) by Comet Hartley 2, which was then an active short - period comet with jets of gas and dust coming off its sun - lit end and which completes an orbit in less than 6.5 years.

Comets travel in an orbit; a short orbital - period comet is one that takes 200 years or less to go around the Sun, and a long orbital - period comet takes more than 200 years — often thousands or even millions of years.

Because the gravity is so low, the spacecraft isn't making neat circles around the comet, but travels in a series of triangular orbits as it nudges closer to the nucleus over the next six weeks.

Rosetta is currently about 100 km (62 mi) from Churyumov — Gerasimenko and will remain in orbit around it for over a year until the comet swings back toward Jupiter.

After ejection, the moon could either have crashed into another Solar System object (like a neighboring gas giant) or been sent into an elongated orbit around the Sun like a comet or into interstellar space (Boué and Laskar, 2009; and Ker Than, New Scientist, December 4, 2009).

chart maps the flight path and orbit around every planet, moon, comet, and asteroid of the many instruments illustrated, including every orbiter, rover, flyby, and impactor that has successfully left Earth's gravitational field.

The Cosmic Exploration chart maps the flight path and orbit around every planet, moon, comet, and asteroid of the many instruments illustrated, including every orbiter, rover, flyby, and impactor that has successfully left Earth's gravitational field.