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Rosetta Alice UV Spectrometer
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The Alice ultraviolet imaging spectrometer, one of three NASA instruments aboard the European Space Agency (ESA) Rosetta comet orbiter, successfully passed its space checkout last month. The checkout occurred approximately 20 million kilometers from Earth under radio command and control, leading to textbook "first light" observations of the interplanetary hydrogen and a nearby, bright comet called C/2002 T7 (LINEAR).
Rosetta launched from the ESA spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on March 2, 2003. It will rendezvous with the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. On the way, Rosetta will fly by the Earth twice, Mars, and two asteroids. The Alice instrument will observe all these targets for over a year as Rosetta "escorts" the comet around the Sun.
Dr. Alan Stern, director of the Space Studies Department at SwRI, is the principal investigator of the Alice instrument, and Dr. Joel Parker is the Project Scientist. They and their team will use the data from Alice to study the composition of the comet's nucleus and coma, observe how its activity changes with proximity to the Sun, and better understand its formation history. Since comets are considered to be some of the most pristine objects left over from the formation of our Solar System, they are key to understanding the origin and evolution of our Solar System.
Click here for SwRI's press release.
