COMET PROBE ROSETTA ENDS 12-YEAR MISSION WITH CRASH
BERLIN After 12 years of hurtling through space in pursuit of a comet, the Rosetta probe ended its mission Friday with a slow-motion crash onto the icy surface of the alien world it was sent out to study.
Mission controllers lost contact with the probe, as expected, after it hit the surface of comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko at 10:39 a.m. GMT (6:39 a.m. ET) Friday, the European Space Agency said.
“Farewell Rosetta, you’ve done the job,” said mission manager Patrick Martin. “That is space science at its best.”
ESA chief Jan Woerner called the 1.4-billion-euro ($2.06-billion) mission a success.
Aside from sending a lander onto the surface of comet 67P in November 2014 — a cosmic first — the Rosetta mission has collected vast amounts of data that researchers will spend many years analyzing.