Philae landing attempt on Comet big day for Belfast astronomers

Astronomers at Queen’s University in Belfast will be anxiously awaiting news of the scheduled attempt today to land a probe on an icy comet 317 million miles away from Earth.

For the past year Professor Alan Fitzsimmons from the Astrophysics Research Centre at Queen's has been part of the ground-based comet monitoring team involved in the preparations for the probe called Philae to touchdown on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Moreover, he has been involved with Queen’s colleagues in observing the comet for more than a decade. “We have waited over 10 years for this day, but with the comet being over 317 million miles away, all we can do now is cross our fingers and hope,” said Prof Fitzsimmons yesterday.

Philae was due to be released at 8.35 am today from the European Space Agency Rosetta spacecraft, and then spend the next 7 hours descending to the comet.

It is hoped that a successful “the probe has landed” signal will be received on Earth shortly after 4 pm today along with the first pictures from a comet’s surface.

Prof Fitzsimmons has just returned from Chile, where he used the worlds' most powerful telescopes to perform a final reconnaissance of the comet. Some of his colleagues include former Queen's students now working on the mission.

“The Rosetta mission realises the ambition of mankind to explore our origins, and discover what is out there. It demonstrates that the European Space Agency plays a major role in the scientific exploration of our solar system, and Queen’s is part of that effort,” said Prof Fitzsimmons.

The professor said the comet is mainly made up of iced water and that if successful the probe will test the theory that water was delivered to Earth through comet impact.

Asked about the chances of a successful landing he said, “The chances are as good as they can be because they have the best space flight engineers working on this mission. If anybody can do it, they can.”

Prof Fitzsimmons will further explain what the mission has told us so far about comets on BBC4 on Sunday at 9 pm, in a Sky at Night Special programme.