MISSION TO CATCH A COMET
Every so often in our Solar System, a comet swings in from the outer reaches and makes a brief visit to the inner portion of the system before heading out again – either on a long sweeping orbit, or never to be seen again. Such comets, known as long-period comets, are of great interest to scientists, but we’ve only ever seen them from afar. What if we could see one up close?
That’s the idea behind a new mission called Comet Interceptor, which in June 2019 was selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) for further development, with a potential launch planned in 2028. The mission will be unprecedented, launching with no particular target in mind, but instead waiting in space for a suitable comet to approach from the Oort Cloud, the vast array of trillions of comets thought to surround our Solar System. If one gets nudged from its orbit and does approach – and it’s hoped it will – the spacecraft will race off and fly past, returning images and data to Earth in the process.
“It’s a unique target,” says Dr Colin Snodgrass from the University of Edinburgh in the UK, the deputy
