ONE OF THE BIGGEST EVENTS OF SPACE EXPLORATION IS ABOUT TO TAKE PLACE ON NOVEMBER 12! GET YOUR FAMILY READY FOR THE HISTORIC MOMENT!! We all love the ocean, but have you ever stopped to think where did all the water actually come from? We discovered that the actual water molecules in the ocean are older than the life of our solar system! In other words, the water on Earth is OLDER than Earth! So where DID all the water on Earth come from? The answer is (probably) comets! Comets are essentially giant Ice cubes floating in space. These are meteor-like objects that contain Ice and other materials. On November 12, just a couple of weeks from now, a small space craft called Rosetta will send a little lander that will actually land on a comet! This is big. Its HUGE! But it is not going to be easy... The comet itself is very different from what anyone imagined - it looks... well... weird! Its insanely complicated to land on a spinning little comet. Far more complicated than landing on, say, Mars. Rosetta was built by the European Space Agency (ESA not NASA). It was launched in 2004 and have been floating in spacer for an entire decade during which time it was swinging 3 times around the Earth to get enough momentum and speed to fly all the way to the comet. To preserve energy during the trip Rosetta went to sleep - shutting down of most of the space craft systems. Check out the cool kids-friendly video: youtu.be/3lptDXWyxj0 Waking Rosetta up was a historical moment. No one ever tried anything similar to that and there were serious concerns that Rosetta will stay to sleep forever... But Rosetta woke up just on time and as planned. This was a few months ago and since then Rosetta has been chasing the comet. Now it is orbiting the comet, mapping it and doing Science. The landing will be on November 12 and you will ba able to see it live as it happens thanks to the Internet! Find out more about this interesting and historical moment in the following video. Its well worth the 10 minutes! youtu.be/cArihDTnOZg
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 13:19:50 +0000
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