Rosetta spacecraft gets ready for launch News story originally
written on January 15, 2004 The Rosetta space mission will be
launched in February 2004. Rosetta will travel to a comet and
study it. Part of the spacecraft will actually land on the
comet. It will be the first spacecraft to do that. Rosetta was
supposed to start its mission about one year ago in January
2003. Unfortunately, there were some problems with the rocket
Rosetta was supposed to be launched on, so the mission had to be
delayed. While engineers were fixing the rocket, the comet that
Rosetta was supposed to visit moved out of range. Scientists had
to pick a new comet for Rosetta to visit. Rosetta will be going
to a comet named Churyumov-Gerasimenko. That comet is bigger
than the comet Rosetta was originally supposed to visit.
Engineers had to make some changes to the legs of the Rosetta
lander so it can land safely on the new, larger comet, which has
more gravity than the old Rosetta will take a long time to get
to the comet. Rosetta will