Artist’s impression of Rosetta’s descent on the comet on 30 September 2016. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
Some ten weeks have passed since Rosetta ended its mission on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, and it is time for a little reflection here on the Rosetta blog…
Over the past three years, we have written over 670 posts covering mission operations, science highlights, special events, images of the comet, and so much more. The blog has become a reference for a wide audience, ranging from science journalists to space enthusiasts, from casual readers to educators and even Rosetta mission scientists and operators.
Beyond that, it has become a place for people to share their ideas and concerns. When we re-launched the blog in 2013, we did not expect the huge number of comments that came in – almost 18,600 to date – and certainly we didn’t envision the considerable amount of time needed to moderate them! But we learned a lot from the comments, some of which became lengthy discussions, and which on occasion triggered new blog posts or direct engagement between readers and mission experts.
However, with the flight phase of the mission now over there are obviously no longer any news updates to share about current operations, and so we have decided to close the blog. We will soon publish our last post and close the comments section for good, although naturally, all of the material will remain online for the foreseeable future.
And of course, we will keep writing about new scientific results based on data from the mission as they are published, and news such as updates on the availability of data in the public archives. These will be reported via our websites (Space Science Portal and Science & Technology) and on social media, especially via our @esascience Twitter account.
It’s been an amazing and intense three years for us, and we hope that you also enjoyed the ride. It has been our pleasure to have you join in. As a final farewell, we would like to invite all blog readers to tell us a little about yourselves – after all, many of the contributors to the comment section are long since familiar to us by their names and nicknames, but in many cases, we don’t know a lot more.
So, make a comment to this post and feel free to tell us when, how, and why you became interested in Rosetta/comets/space science in general, how you found out about the blog, whether you followed it regularly, and what you enjoyed (or disliked!) most about it.
As ever, there are rules: only one comment allowed per contributor and, as usual, off-topic posts will not be published 😉
The comment function of the blog will be deactivated before the holiday break, so please post your comments before then.
We are looking forward to reading your contributions!
Best wishes,
– The Rosetta blog team
Discussion: 33 comments
I’ve always been interested in space and spaceflight. 1986 was amazed by the Giotto mission and started following the Rosetta mission when I first read about it in the first half of the 90s.
Rosetta was (and is) an amazing mission and it was a great time following the preparations, the start, the flight, the wake up, Philae’s #CometLanding (1), lots of science and Rosetta’s #CometLanding (2).
Thank you for the great work! Congratulations!
Hi Claudia,
First off thank you to yourself, Emily and everybody else who has worked to bring the blog to us. Not least to the scientists at the ‘sharp’ end, doing the science that you report on.
For myself, I had an interest in the night sky from a young age, picked up from my father. When I took my first degree (astronomy, in NZ), it was at the time of Halley’s comet’s last visit. I remember awaiting the various science publications that reported the results, turning up in the university library. No such thing as the internet then!
Since then, I’ve always followed comet missions particularly closely.
I decided to ‘update’ my degree by taking a similar one with the Open University in the UK, many years later. That was at about the time that Tempel 1 was in the news. Papers (including all the old Halley ones) were a lot easier to find by then! People who read this blog regularly won’t be surprised to know that I kept all those downloaded papers 🙂
My interest in Rosetta peaked when it woke up from hibernation. I didn’t want to get too excited prior to that, as space missions have a habit of ending disappointingly (Beagle nearly ruined Xmas for me in 2003!).
The blog has always been my first port of call to see any updates on the mission. I’ve enjoyed reading the articles, and participating in the ‘discussions’. Some of them have been interesting, to say the least! A lot of those old papers certainly came in handy, and I’ve now got a collection of over 250, more than half of them from this mission. I was a bit surprised when I realised quite how they’d added up.. I think I may have a problem!
I’ve even taken to Twitter to follow various people in the world of science. Not something I would have contemplated before this blog (people even post pictures of running shoes on there! Can you believe that? 🙂 )
Thank you again for the blog, and I hope it, and the mission itself, inspires a new generation of kids to look up and wonder.
It may seem strange for me to say this here; but with the imminent blog closure I felt it was necessary to record my personal thanks for the fantastic job the team has done under not always easy circumstances 😉
You have greatly contributed to make Rosetta the success it is !!
Emily, Claudia, Karen and all the others, without you it wouldn’t have been the same.
Chapeau!
Former mission manager, Fred Jansen
Hi Claudia,
I have said before, but I will say it again, it was a model of how to run a scientific Blog, I know we were impatient and sometimes fractious , but some how you managed it so that every one, from casual observer to a doctor of physics could contribute it has been a complete Blast.
Of course It also depended on the scientific teams to release so much interesting information, so a huge thanks to them as well
My interest in comets started some 53 years ago when I was 7 and given something like an I spy book about the solar system where I had to stick pictures of planets in it as I read the text.
It had a section on Comets but especially a picture of Halley’s Comet with a tail stretching from horizon to horizon. Back then I worked out the year I would be able to see it in the UK.
Unfortunately it was a big disappointment, thank heavens for Hale-Bopp that put on a show.
But the 67 mission and the blogg, made up for the disappointment of Halley/s
Great Blogg
Thanks
brilliant, engaging and at times funny. As a uk archaeologist and general science geek I have loved following this mission and so have my kids.
Got interested through a tweet: https://twitter.com/holgi/status/521026123510341632 and since then an avid reader of the blog and of course following all the great events around 67P. Really a great way of scientific communication! Thanks
It has been an amazingly inspirational journey! I followed Rosetta and Philae keenly throughout their voyage and was left feeling sad but fulfilled at the end of the adventure. I have been an amateur astronomer since I was a very young child, and my father, also an amateur astronomer, used to read to me about the stars and the planets. Thankyou for the journey and Bravo! 😀
THANK YOU,
I used to work as an engineer for Patria in Finland who contributed in the making of Rosetta.
Now teaching math and physics at the high school in Sisimiut, Greenland, I have used your posts and cartoon to inspire the students and my kids who cried about the sad ending for Rosetta and Philae
Well done!
Hello, I’ve been interested in space since my childhood. I started following space missions with the Space Shuttle program (that says something about my age…) so the chance to follow them on the Internet is fantastic for me.
Comets are fascinanting objects and through Rosetta mission I discovered much more about them. As a blogger, I followed it closely and there was both an intellectual interest and and emotional involvment for me. it was sad when the mission ended and a few days later Klim Churyumov passed away.
Look forward to more great missions by ESA! Bye.
I was a litte apprentice for Mechanics at the MPI for Aeronomy in Lindau (now Solar System Research in Göttingen) when I was slightly involved in the Rosetta Mission (e.g. COSAC -> electrical boxes).
From the days when 46P/Wirtanen was still the landing target over the live broadcast from the start in French Guayana until now I was following the Mission and have to admit that I am proud in my little world, happy for scientist/engineers and until the end I will have a smile on my face when I look up into the Milky Way from my House in the middle of my home forrest in the Harz Mountains to went so far to know just a Little bit more.
Aloha and Peace to all of you
simon
Me emocionou muito toda a saga da Rosetta! Uma pena que a descida do cometa não tenha sido perfeita. Mas parabéns para toda a Equipe da ESA por ter-nos proporcionado as lindas imagens!
Congratulations!!!
Dear Rosetta Blog-team,
I first started reading here shortly before the wake-up of Rosetta. At the time I was busy studying for MSc in Space Engineering and the oppertunity to maybe work on such a mission in the future was always an inspiration.
After graduating I then got the chance to join the Roestta Flight Control Team as Spacecraft Controller for a time. As such I had the pleasure to “talk” to Rosetta in its orbit around the comet. In this sense also thanks for translating from engineerish to normal english 🙂
Thanks!
Frederik
Greetings from Manila!
I have been following the Rosetta mission since 2014, when Rosetta successfully met with comet 67P and wrote about it as part of my work as a science news reporter online until Rosetta snapped its farewell images of the surface of the comet.
It has truly been an emotional roller coaster for me as this is the first time I followed the journey of a mothership and its doomed tiny lander. It was an enlightening experience filled with wonder, hope and grit. It was heart breaking to say good bye to the mission.
As an artist, Rosetta’s comet imagery also inspired me to create paintings of satellite images of landscapes from an orbital point of view.
Thank you for sharing all this incredible science, as always I am an avid fan of ESA.
*Ad astra per aspera*
I have been a fangirl of and cheerleader for space exploration since Sputnik! It’s hard to pick a favorite, especially from the last few years. Riding a comet and the long trek to Pluto — both still blow my mind!
I have my own asteroid, btw — 117586Twilatho.
I grew up in the same county as Clyde Tombaugh’s KS home town.
And I always grab the chance to mention the Cosmosphere, one of the world’s premier space museums, also in Kansas.
Ad astra per aspera — also the official Kansas motto which is on the state flag!
THANK YOU ROSETTA MISSION!
From my “birthday” until now (68) interessted in space and astronomy. It started with the moonlandings end sixtees (I was 22 at that time and proud to join this moment). Roseeta-mission was special becaus of Phillea and the sharp photos of a comet. You did a great job. Thanks !!!
I am from Bavaria, Germany. I stumbled over the videos on the heise.de site. I watched them all with my 5 year old son, over and over again, before he has to go to bed. He loves Rosetta & Philae, and me being Rosetta and he being Philae – with a yellow hard hat of course! – we replayed them. He riding on my shoulders and yelling “Are we there yet?!”
Thank You very much for your great work and for inspiring so many people all over the world!
Juergen 🙂
Hi Rosetta team .-). I only just became aware of this blog and I am very unhappy to see it go.
It’s very difficult for me to say when I became interested in science, but I’ve been a faithful reader of Illustrated Science (Danish magazine) for several years :-).
It is, however, very easy to say how I became interested in Rosetta :-). I bought a giant book about the universe a few months after having read about the Rosetta mission in Illustrated Science and I remember thinking “Awesome that ESA is behind such a venture!” and I’ve been a follower ever since :-). Besides, your Rosetta short story was awesome! :-).
A bit like me, Rosetta is and was an unlikely mission with a very ambitious goal, so thank you for achieving it :-).
Even though my father’s has worked for NASA as a contractor, my interest in space is rather recent – my daughter was very into finding the moon when she was two and was able to do so faster than I was (day or night). I decided to get a telescope to show it to her up close and it quickly became my obsession. I’ve since started with astrophotography – my work is very amateur, but I really love the challenge. I watched the Philae landing live and really wanted an ESA hoodie after watching it (I had to settle for a t-shirt). I still can’t believe you did it – what an accomplishment! Thanks for all your hard work and congratulations on an amazing mission!
I have always been interested of physics and astronomy. When I was a young boy I read a lot of books about planets and universe. After that I become an engineer and now I am working as a software developer for many years.
When I read about first missions on Venus, Mars and Moon (Lunokhod 1 and 2) I start dreaming to be a part of the teams who make such robots. That was my child dream.
That’s why I was very excited when I learned about Rosetta and Philae.
Who could imagine that someday we will land on a comet?
Thanks for the great journey! It was AMAZING!
I always had a keen interest in space and exploration but Rosetta and Philae took it to a whole new level. The excitement and emotion you shared with us all as she awoke and then as Philae made her descent was something I’ll always remember. I felt sad when it came to an end but we are richer as a civilisation for the discoveries you have made and the hope you have given us for the future. To top off the year, meeting Dr Matt Taylor in Glasgow a few weeks ago and seeing the mission summary first hand was inspirational.
Thanks you Rosetta. Thank you ESA.
Hi outreach team. I am still mourning the end of the mission but the end of the blog is also distressing to me. I first became obsessed about the Rosetta mission back in 2012, when musing on the origin of life and it’s relationship to comets. References to the chirality experiments on Rosetta and Philae were an initial interest, but also the bi-lobed nature of Hartley 2, Borrelly and Halley. I had stretch in mind then, but I figured it was too much to hope for for 67P to give more evidence of stretch. It’s shape was calculated to be more football shaped than the complex shape it turned out to be.
Before Rosetta’s arrival, the planetary society blog’s were my favoured forums, but quite soon after arrival, it became clear that the focus for discussions on the comet and the mission, science and outreach, speculation and moderation, was the Rosetta Blog. It was a magnet for precisely the discussions I wanted to have, with others also fiercely interested in both mission results and wider interpretations. I have readily thrown my ideas into the mix – Internal Liquid water (mud), Oxygen giving life, jets originating deeply, onion layers, tectonic like activity, Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapour Explosions (BLEVEs) from pressurised layers, Chiral complex organics, horizontal surface movements of layers, Heavily processed surface and interior, and of course, the stretch explanation for the nucleus getting its shape.
I will especially miss the open public discussions with Gerald, Harvey and Ianw16. I fear that these will never be restarted again. I could of course start email threads with them, but it would not be the same as a moderated public exchange of ideas. I will continue expanding on stretch theory with A.Cooper, and it continues to be more and more fruitful with our insights enabling us to pick out errors in peer reviewed literature, which we are taking up directly with the authors where appropriate. We will publish our own ideas in due course, but there is what I can only describe as institutional red tape, in the sense that it is hard to be taken at face value without institutional (eg. University) support and funding of the research you have undertaken.
I have been particularly impressed with Emily and Claudia as moderators and I will continue to stalk, I mean follow, them on Twitter and other media. The anthropomorphisation of Rosetta and Philae were fantastic to attract public attention, but the daring and professionalism of the mission engineers were my greatest source of awe. To balance the various demands from competing scientific teams, while keeping a safe and reliable mission was an amazing feat, which makes me proud to be part of the human race.
Where to from now? For me, I look to upcoming missions such as OSIRIS Rex and Hyabusa for small body missions to further test my ideas, but also to Social media such as Research Gate to discuss science ideas with other scientists.
Hi Claudia
Kudos to you and Emily for holding onto the reins while the commenters bolted off in every direction. Also to OSIRIS scientists, Matteo Massironi, Ramy El-Maarry and Jean-Baptiste Vincent for engaging with me and Marco Parigi directly in the comments. And the Rosetta team for producing such accurate, reliable data.
My first interest was NEO’s. I link radiants of close-approaching NEO’s (sub 50,000 km) to large, concurrent meteor trajectories that are well-characterised. The meteor’s azimuth, altitude, velocity and timing is compared to that of a would-be NEO fragment trajectory at that lat/long location. It includes gravity well effects. A colleague, Frank Davis, refines my work in his orbit programme to get the exact NEO fragment velocity and trajectory. That result is compared to the real meteor trajectory. We’ve had some success and think that scoping radiants of close approachers for offset fragments could reveal (hopefully small) rocks that are on course for us and a few days out. Astronomers assert that asteroids don’t strew fragments along their orbits while papers are trickling out showing asteroids fragmenting due to spin-up. Spin-up is the segue to 67P.
When I saw the first 67P photos, it seemed to me the head had sheared and stretched from the body. My first Rosetta blog comment in August 2014 suggested this and Marco replied, saying I should start a blog. The ‘stretch blog’ now has 80 posts. It’ll be 150+ when done and take another two years. With Marco’s 20+ posts, there are now 100 on stretch with enough material for many sci papers. We don’t have institutional affiliation, so we’re finding it hard to get our work published. The alternative is for affiliated scientists to trawl our blogs and reproduce our work but of course, we’d rather like to be the ones to publish our own work!
My findings include head/body matches, delaminated layers/sink holes, and rifts, which all obey tensile force vectors for spin-up to a 2-hour rotation. Other discoveries are slurry signatures and a hypothesised paleo equator, paleo spin axis and 12° precession to today’s equator line. My calcs for head detachment (centrifugal force, tensile resistance, AM conservation, rotation periods) agree broadly with the modelling results in Hirabayashi et al. (2016). When all these findings were injected into the Rosetta blog comments, they generated much heated discussion as did Marco’s discoveries. Eventually, an OSIRIS lead author stepped in to critique ‘stretch theory’ in a Rosetta blog post- stretch isn’t accepted by the mainstream.
I’ll miss the long discussions with Gerald, Harvey and Ianw16 as well as Logan’s pithy insights and many others. I’m looking forward to the next comet mission and possibly a return to 67P in ~23 years’ time when I’ll expect Emily and Claudia to be at the ready 🙂
Andrew Cooper
I am not a scientist, just a simple woman with a passion for Astronomy. I daily check interplanetary space missions, like Dawn, New Horizons, Juno or Cassini. (and I did the same with Rosetta or Messenger). All of them are amazing. However, Rosetta was special because of the people behind:
1. With weekly and sometimes daily updates, I learned a lot about the spaceship and the comet. Other missions don’t have a blog post for months, even if their targets are amazing places too.
2. The fact that anyone could add a reply or ask a question, is something I’ve never seen. on a space mission. Suddenly, you opened your heart to the people.
3. The way you posted the articles (the size, the chosen words, images and the logical behind the ideas) is by far the best. I’ve read your articles many times to my children and they were their favorite.
4. Talking about kids, the ‘once upon the time’ series were amazing.
5. The search for Philae, with all the resources involved, was so amazing that I have no words to describe it.
I would strongly advice people behind other space missions to follow the way you wrote these posts and the way this blog was developed. I asked once a question to the New Horizons team and one to the Cassini team and they never answered to me… but you did and not once.
Our comet might be the smallest celestial body long studied by a spacecraft, but it sure had the best and most opened team.
Best wishes for the entire team and for future ESA teams that will work on other similar missions!
Ana Imfinity (Abida Cemis)
P.S. My native language is Circassian (North Caucasian), excuse me for any orthographic errors.
Hi , I am Roy from Devon in the UK. In my early years (born 1951) I was not a bright person and underachieved at school. When I first saw a man made object in the night sky it sparked my imagination. I spent time in the nuclear industry and was inspired to push my boundaries. We need you guys to press on regardless of short term setbacks. Have confidence to make progress. Perhaps we need to encourage more critical thought in planning such complex missions where the basic elements can trip us all up.
I stumbled upon the mission through Matt’s “Shirtstorm” and Paul Mathews’ @IamComet67P & @IamPhilaelander Twitter feeds. The #WakeUpPhilae campaign made me research the mission, which made me sad that this amazing program was not widely known in the US. I fell in love with the “Once Upon A Time” stories & “Ambition”.
Thank you Mark, Matt, Paul, Emily, Claudia & everyone who made a tweet, cartoon, drawing, t-shirt, or post. I fell in love with your work & Rosetta & Philae.
P.S. I was never offended by Matt’s shirt…
Hi Rosetta and Philae team. Thank you for the wonderful journey you’ve taken us on. It’s been a real pleasure following you work of science and exploration. All the best, Vince
I follow all space missions. When Rosetta was reactivated for final approach I found this blog via a web search. I visited almost every day throughout the entire mission.
The Blog was and is a success, certainly a model for all other space missions, allowing people such as myself to feel very much a part of the scientific process of day to day exploration and discovery. Thanks.
Dear Claudia, Emily, and other Rosetta blog team,
I am not related to the scientific community whatsoever but just just a passionate of astronomy 🙂
I would like to thank all of you of your fantastic job and your dedication to handle this blog. It has been such an amaizing tool for me to follow up and understand the progress of this formidable journey, and I have to confess that after consulting this blog for more than 3 years, I will feel like lonely after its closure…
Thanks a lot again to all of you, you really made us dream with all your publications and you now deserve a good rest 😉
Season greetings,
Jean-Yves Hansart
Belgium
Hello from Houston! I am an engineer with NASA at Johnson Space Center and have enjoyed following the Rosetta mission through your wonderful blog. I watched the Philae landing with NASA and ESA colleagues while at a meeting in Germany for the new Orion Spacecraft. Congratulations on a successful and inspiring mission, and thank you for allowing us to follow along through your blog.
Thanks team !!!!
Thanks to all the contributors and commenters too, who made the blog much more than was expected!!!
you all rock !!!
\m/
Thank you for sharing this mission with the world. It’s been an amazing journey. Like many who followed Rosetta, I am not a scientist, but rather someone whose imagination was caught by the earliest moon missions and who has loved anything space-related ever since.
I am rather in awe of all those who worked for so many years in their various disciplines to bring this mission to such a successful conclusion. It’s rather odd to feel so proud of all of you, not knowing you, but I do and I truly extend my thanks to all.
I, like others, experienced some sadness at the ending of the mission (I still have my poster from Matt Taylor’s presentation at the University of Alberta, Canada pinned to my kitchen cupboard, reluctant to take it down). I haven’t quite “landed” on another mission to follow; this speaks to how brilliantly you drew me and others into Rosetta’s journey.
So as I say farewell, I am thinking of Rosetta and Philae together on 67P and taking some comfort from knowing that their journey continues. Thank you once again and goodbye …..
Lauri Baldwin, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
I’ve been interested in science in general for as long as I can recall – certainly from age 6 or so. Became a professional scientist, have always followed the space flight programs, and have worked on one spacecraft (which was never launched :-). ) So there were many reasons I ended up here.
I found the blog simply as a link when looking for the status of this mission, and have been in and out of the discussion ever since, largely determined by foreign travel, when I tend to be less involved, to just watch from the sidelines.
I would like to add both my thanks to the team that supported the blog, and also to record my – admiration I guess – for the entire Rosetta team. Having some fairly detailed understanding of the physics and technology involved gives one an appreciation of just how difficult this mission was.
I look forward to reading papers on its results for a considerable time to come.
For me, the blog can be roughly diivided into three sections.
There were a number of regular posters, many with significant background knowledge, with whom there was a rational debate. One might not always agree, but the debate was driven by an attempt to understand, and stick to the data and credible physics.
Then there were occasional visitors, often seeking an explanation of something, usually with little background knowledge. That’s fine of course, happy to oblige.
Mainly early on, we were, from my point of view, plagued by totally unphysical arguments which made strong assertions on the basis of no data or wild misunderstandings of the data, with no credible physics. To me, irritating, and my rebuttals were largely driven by a desire not to see the second group mislead into believing nonsense, rather than with any hope of getting the adherents of this stuff to see sense!
Overall, last aspect aside, an enjoyable and interesting window into the mission and chance to discuss it with others.
I will close by thanking and congratulating the entire Rosetta team one last time.
First of all, I would like to thank each & every persons involved in this mission. I have a strong impression that I have seen very nice things through Rosetta/Philae mission.
I am a late comer to this mission. I had heard the name Rosetta from time to time but did not know nothing about it. I started having interests in watching stars in my childhood days but comet has not been my “special” interests comparing to other celestial bodies/events. So I still don’t know why I wanted to see Rosetta mission’s (communication team’s) press conference in the end of 2013.
I know that when I see space mission today, I also tend to see people involved in it & how they behave especially when facing public far and wide (not only its national citizen). In other words, how they respect/treasure people not only inside the mission but also outside of it.
Probably the biggest question I have today is: Human Beings’s space mission tends to be done by international collaboration these days, and personally I believe that people working on space mission should be ones with wider views instead of short- or narrow-sighted. But in this real world it’s not rare to see the opposites today. For example, highlighting themselves only, without telling about related things by outsider, which I think does not lead public to have bigger picture (or reality) & does lead public to even misunderstandings. (Another example might be astronaut. How many names of today’s astronauts who are not from your country can you say??)
Since 20th January 2014 it has always looked to me that Rosetta/Philae mission is open. Very open, I should say, comparing to other space missions past & present which I have seen. And I have no memory of this mission looking like trying to hide something not good (I don’t count the fact that the audio from the mission control room at ESOC when waiting for the signal from Rosetta on #WakeUpRosetta day turned down after long length of wait time, as the mission kept livestreaming the visuals!!). Did I forget/miss something?!?!?! Instead the mission rather always has looked like trying to share the fact as much as possible, as quickly as possible. What a way to face public. I have been so moved by these efforts.
The best moment of such might have been when Philae’s primary battery was running out. But in general, particularly the Rosetta Blog’s comment area & Once Upon A Time cartoon series have been really, really impressive.
So, again, thank you all.
BTW the other day I had an occasion to speak with Dr Ulamec & Prof Bibring by seeing physically!! Very briefly but true!! Living very much away from those who are working on the mission, for me it’s a dream!! But whether physically or via internet or by something else, I have had occasions to communicate with some people working on this mission. Particularly I would like to thank all of you.
Looking forward to more science results coming!!
Warmest regards
Love and peace
Masanori