Well, Rosetta won’t be landing, but rather a small lander it’s carrying called Philae. The lander only has a battery life of 64 hours, meaning there are only a few days that it’s guaranteed to be operational. It does have solar panels to recharge the battery, but the extra time will depend on the landing conditions and dust gathered on the panels.
The information Philae will gather is only a small portion of what the space agency hopes to gain, though. Project scientist Matt Taylor said “Landing on the surface is the cherry on the icing on the cake for the Rosetta mission on top of all the great science that will be done by the orbiter in 2014 and 2015. A good chunk of this year will be spent identifying where we will land, but also taking vital measurements of the comet before it becomes highly active. No one has ever attempted this before.”
After hibernating to conserve energy, Rosetta woke up in January, and both Rosetta and Philae have been sending test signals back to Earth since. Everything seems to be going well, so far. Let’s hope nothing goes wrong.
