NASA Television to Cover European Mission Comet Landing

NASA Television and the agency's website will provide live coverage from 9-11:30 a.m. EST (6-8:30 a.m. PST) of the European Space Agency (ESA) Rosetta mission's scheduled landing of a probe on a comet on Wednesday, Nov. 12.

NASA's live commentary will include excerpts of the ESA coverage and air from 9-10 a.m. NASA will continue carrying ESA's commentary from 10-11:30 a.m. ESA's Philae (fee-LAY) lander is scheduled to touch down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at 10:35 a.m.A signal confirming landing is expected at approximately 11:02 a.m.

After landing, Philae will obtain the first images ever taken from a comet's surface. It also will drill into the surface to study the composition and witness close up how a comet changes as its exposure to the sun varies. Philae can remain active on the surface for approximately two-and-a-half days. Its "mothership" is the Rosetta spacecraft that will remain in orbit around the comet through 2015. The orbiter will continue detailed studies of the comet as it approaches the sun and then moves away. NASA has three of the 16 instruments aboard the orbiter.

Comets are considered primitive building blocks of the solar system that are literally frozen in time. They may have played a part in "seeding" Earth with water and, possibly, the basic ingredients for life.

NASA TV streaming video, downlink and updated scheduling information is at:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

For more information on the U.S. instruments aboard Rosetta, visit:

http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov

ESA's live coverage of landing events will be streamed at:

http://www.esa.int/rosetta

More information about Rosetta is available at:

http://www.esa.int/rosetta

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SOURCE NASA

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