city:deir el-medina

The great pit of Deir el-Medina
▻http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2016/09/09/the-great-pit-of-deir-el-medina

On 30 September, #Rosetta will descend towards a smooth region in Ma’at, on the smaller of the two lobes of #Comet_67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It will target a region that is home to several active pits measuring over 100 m wide and over 50 m deep, with the hope to get some close-up glimpses of these fascinating features. The target site is seen in the image below of three pits in Ma’at (first presented in a paper published in July 2015); #rosetta will target the smooth region between the pits labelled Ma’at 02 and 03. The large, well-defined pit adjacent to the target site and identified in the image above as Ma’at 02 has now been named by the mission team as Deir el-Medina, after a pit in an ancient Egyptian town of the same name. The pit bears resemblance in appearance to the pit in the (...)

#Landing #Operations #Science ##CometLanding #comet #navcam #osiris

#Rosetta’s descent towards region of active pits
▻http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2016/09/09/rosettas-descent-towards-region-of-active-pits

Squeezing out unique scientific observations until the very end, #rosetta’s thrilling mission will culminate with a descent on 30 September towards a region of active pits on the #comet’s ‘head’. The region, known as Ma’at, lies on the smaller of the two lobes of #Comet_67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. It is home to several active pits more than 100 m in diameter and 50–60 m in depth – where a number of the comet’s dust jets originate. The walls of the pits also exhibit intriguing metre-sized lumpy structures called ‘goosebumps’, which scientists believe could be the signatures of early ‘cometesimals’ that assembled to create the comet in the early phases of Solar System formation. Rosetta will get its closest look yet at these fascinating structures on 30 September: the spacecraft will target a point (...)

#Comets #Instruments #Landing #Operations #Science ##CometLanding #instruments #science #trajectory