Euro space boffins ready, mere hours from flinging Rosetta lander at Comet 67P

The ESA's comet probe Philae has been given the first official nod in its historic attempt to land on Comet 67P: boffins at the European Space Agency say the lander's Rosetta mothercraft is on the right path towards the soaring cosmic rock.

The agency's European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) Flight Dynamics staff had to confirm that Rosetta’s trajectory will give Philae a clean shot at Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, also known as 67P.

The rock is hurtling through space at 135,000km per hour towards the Sun; the ESA hopes to detach Philae from Rosetta and land it on the surface to carry out science experiments.

“There’s a number of parameters, engineering values related to the navigation accuracy for this first one… are we in the right place with the right velocity? And if all these values are in the right range then it’s a go. If one of them is out, we need to recalculate… for another opportunity in two weeks,” Paolo Ferri, head of mission operations at ESA, explained.

However, this first green-light only means that the comet landing attempt is good for now: Rosetta still has to clear a number of other GO or NOGO decisions before the ESA will commit to the drop.

Overnight, here in Darmstadt, Germany, ESOC scientists and engineers will make various checks to see if Rosetta is ready, get the separation commands ready for upload and prep Philae with commands for landing before the final decision early tomorrow morning – expected roughly around 7am and 8am CET (GMT+1).

The European mission control hopes to get confirmation of the separation of the Philae lander around 9am GMT on Wednesday, with the highly anticipated landing seven hours later.

The historic landing, which will be the first time humanity has managed to remotely touch a comet in space, is the culmination of well over a decade of work. Rosetta took ten years just to make the journey to 67P, currently sitting around 481 million kilometres from Earth.

Your Reg hack will be here at mission control in Darmstadt for the whole thing tomorrow so tune in for updates. ®