DETROIT – It has been 10 years since a spacecraft named Rosetta rocketed into space on a journey to Comet 67P.
Now, a team of University of Michigan scientists who were part of the mission are revealing what the spacecraft has revealed and what will happen next.
"One of the instruments that we're involved with here is a mass spectrometer on the orbiter, and we're already getting some information about the composition of the gases that are coming off," said Dr. Michael Combi, a professor and researcher in UM's Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences.
Combi said research has determined that the icy comet has very low density – it's about as fluffy as a shovelful of snow.
But things are about to get even more interesting on Nov. 12, when Rosetta deploys a lander name Philae onto the comet's surface.
"It's like we took the material at the origin of the solar system and put it in a freezer and saved it for four and a half billion years so that we can analyze it now," Combi said.
Perhaps the most critical question is if comets could have contributed to the development of life on earth.
"Will we be able to determine if those building blocks of life are there? Yes. These mass spectrometers and gas analyzers on both the lander and the orbiter can detect quite large molecules, so hopefully we will be able to detect that," Combi said.
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