A
s we celebrate the tenth anniversary of
Huygens’ descent to the surface of Saturn’s giant satellite Titan, humanity’s first
landing on an outer solar system moon, and
the continuing success of its parent craft Cassini, we look forward to an extraordinary year
of robotic solar system exploration in 2015, and
one which should bring new insights into the
origins of the Earth and of our Solar System.
This is a thrilling period of discovery in
which we are pushing back the frontiers of
planetary science. Having visited the major planets and their systems of satellites and
rings, we are now delving more deeply back
through time than ever before, to the earliest days of the Sun’s rich and diverse family of worlds, big and small, and even to the
period shortly after the condensation of the
Solar Nebula when they were still assembling.
The European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Rosetta
spacecraft, having entered into orbit around Comet
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in September last year,
and having successfully put down the Philae lander
on its surface, will accompany this former Kuiper Belt
world to its perihelion on 13th August 2015 and beyond. (And all of this after encounters with two mainbelt asteroids too!) As well as studying changes in
the comet as it approaches the Sun, then during its
departure, it is hoped that the Rosetta mission may
provide more information about the birth of the solar
system and even, perhaps, the origins of life on Earth.
By Chris Starr FRAS FBIS
Another highlight of the coming summer will be the first
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