He could be described as "The Planet Doctor", since there is hardly any space mission to a planet that does not carry an instrument and the signature of Thanasis Economou.
Since 1997, the historic mission of the Pathfinder arrived on Mars, until Rosetta now shadowing comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the Greek astrophysicist at the University of Chicago, has always, along with colleagues, to supply each spaceship with a small but miraculous instrument to examine the chemical composition of celestial bodies.
The Rosetta carries the APXS, an instrument similar to the one that was on Pathfinder and tested for reliability. "Because Rosetta is a European spacecraft we built in Germany," the Greek scientist who has also been awarded by the NASA for longtime contribution to space research told TA NEA,.
This instrument is very small in size, but when the spacecraft lands on the comet in November, it will be able with the help of special radio signals it will send rocks to analyze their chemical composition and thus help scientists understand exactly what comets are composed of and how they were created.
"Currently we estimate that this comet is composed of a mixture of dust and frozen water, frozen carbon dioxide and some other elements observed in rocks on the Earth, such as silicon, aluminum, iron, magnesium."
However, as he points out, "once you know the identity of the components, the data will be compared with the corresponding data learned from Mars and the Earth, in order to obtain a more complete picture of the creation of planets and generally our solar system. "
In this way, it is possible to verify whether or not various prominent theories that claims that the huge water body which covers most of the Earth's surface, in the distant past came from comets which bombarded our planet periodically.
Over the last days Rosetta has come any closer than 40 km from the comet and this first rendezvous takes place within about 300 million kilometers from the Sun. This is the first time we will try to reach a spacecraft and a comet lander to the surface, where there is no trace of gravity.
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