ESA Rosetta Mission: Waking up from Hibernation

Philae landing on comet

Next year, on 20 January, after 957 days of hibernation in deep space, ESA’s comet-chasing Rosetta spacecraft is set to wake up automatically en route to the destination it has been travelling towards for nearly a decade.

In preparation for the critical activation and the challenges that lie ahead for Rosetta, members of the media are invited to a briefing by ESA’s science and mission control experts and partners on Tuesday, 10 December, 10:00–12:30 CET, at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany.

The 20 January milestone will mark the start of an intensive year as Rosetta draws steadily closer to comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko ahead of rendezvous in August.

After extensively mapping the comet’s surface, it will dispatch the lander Philae in November for close-up study of the nucleus.

Rosetta will then follow the comet on its journey through the inner Solar System, monitoring the ever-changing conditions as it warms up heading towards its closest approach to the Sun, in August 2015.

Rosetta’s main objective is to help understand the origin and evolution of the Solar System, in particular investigating the role that comets may have played in seeding Earth with water, and perhaps even life.