The Rosetta Mission: Where Is It Now?

Jubilee Building, University Of Sussex, Falmer, Tuesday, February 9

LOOKING at the basic outline of the Rosetta Mission it feels like something out of a science fiction novel.

It was a 12 year project, with a further eight years in the planning, which spent ten years travelling four billion miles in space before landing the Philae spacecraft on the spinning surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

And it is all set to end in September when the Rosetta satellite is smashed into the comet to stop it becoming another piece of space debris.

With so much ground-breaking data coming from the satellite, and that collected by the Philae lander itself, which is changing the way we think about the creation of the solar system, it’s perhaps no surprise the mainstream media has chosen instead to focus on ESA Project Scientist Dr Matt Taylor’s rock star tattoos and choice of shirts.

Speaking on the phone from the European Space Agency headquarters in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, Taylor is effortlessly knowledgeable, yet at the same time able to break down the complexities of the mission so it can be understood by the layman. And he is keen to emphasise he is "a small part in a massive machine of cool people".

From the media reports of the bouncing lander, which eventually went offline after being caught in the shadow of a rocky outcrop, one would be forgiven for thinking aspects of the endeavour were a bit shambolic. But he describes the experience as being one giant high.

“The lander did what it was supposed to do,” he says. “It was designed to have three functions in its mission: separation, descent and landing. By bouncing about across the surface of the comet we got science we would never have got before.

“We did about 80 per cent of the science we wanted to do, plus a bit extra science from the bouncing. We didn’t get a sample into the lander itself for the ovens to cook the surface material so we weren’t able to analyse that.”

In fact there is so much data that has been transmitted and is still being transmitted it will keep Taylor in work for at least another two years, and should form the basis of discoveries for the next two decades. Taylor says of the 60 hours of data received from the lander, and two years worth from the Rosetta satellite, there is still much that the scientists controlling the mission just simply haven’t had time to look at.

What has already been found out has completely changed theories about how the solar system was formed.

“One of the results the lander produced was the magnetic field of the comet,” says Taylor.

“We have a magnetic field on Earth – it’s fundamental in terms of the interaction with the sunshine and atmosphere.

“We look at comets as the left over debris of the beginning of the solar system – by-products of the whole process. By looking at them we can have an idea of what the situation was then.

“The fact there isn’t a magnetic field on the comet puts into question whether magnetic fields played an important component in building the solar system. It gets rid of 50 per cent of the models – we are rethinking things.

“Some of the results from the comet pre-date the creation of our sun.”

In terms of our knowledge of space he makes an analogy with our knowledge of the weather.

“The weather can still surprise us, but we have a number of measureables – satellites, knowledge of clouds and buoys all over the oceans. We can go outside and look out of the window.

“In the context of investigating the environment of space we have to get up close to understand and analyse it. And at present we only have the equivalent of a few weather balloons to find out what is going on. It’s the same as 400 years ago sending ships off to investigate new lands – we don’t know what is there. We have preconceptions on how we think thinks will work out from other missions – 30 years ago we had Giotto [which went within 600 miles of Halley’s Comet as it sped by in 1986]. But Rosetta is special because it is sitting alongside a comet and seeing how it works over time.”

What is even more stunning is the amount that was left to chance with the mission. The original plan was to connect with another comet, but plans had to change at the last minute.

When Taylor joined the team in 2013 the satellite was about to come out of a ten-year hibernation.

“The scientists were using centuries old laws of dynamics to know when to turn the Rosetta back on,” says Taylor. “They were going to plant an object on a comet which they had no idea what it looked like, other than knowing where it was in the sky.”

It is through missions like Rosetta that the public interest in science and technology has been reignited – which can be seen in the fascination with Sussex’s own astronaut Tim Peake’s mission into space.

And Taylor is happy to share in that re-engagement in science by talking at events like the Brighton Science Festival on top of his usual day job.

“My job is to make sure the science is being done on the mission,” he says. “To talk to people is a bonus.”

His normal day-to-day duties involve a lot of politics and discussions, dealing with emails and writing reports – but giving the talks reminds him what an astonishing project he is a part of.

“I’m a small part in a massive machine,” he says. “We are all in awe of the thing we are involved in.

“One thing which really touched me was the image of the lander where we could see the comet in the background and the foot of the lander on the surface.

"Just to see that alien landscape with an object we built as humans together was one of the wow moments.”

Starts 7pm, free. Visit www.brightonscience.com