Krypton and xenon added to #Rosetta’s noble gas inventory
▻http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2016/06/14/krypton-and-xenon-added-to-rosettas-noble-gas-inventory
Rosetta has detected the noble gases krypton and xenon while flying close to #Comet_67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko last month. The detections were made during dedicated orbits between 10 and 31 May, which took the spacecraft to within 10 km of the #comet’s surface, and sometimes as close as 5 km. The discovery was highlighted today by Kathrin Altwegg, Principal Investigator of the ROSINA instrument that made the detections, during a Royal Society meeting on ‘Cometary #Science after #rosetta ’ in London, UK. “We had sporadic hints of krypton while briefly flying at 12 km in early March, but the confirmation was only possible thanks to a longer period of observation during these close orbits,” she says. “Noble gases bound up inside the comet very easily escape into space through sublimation, so (...)