Rosetta concludes 12-year mission

Europe’s comet-chasing probe might give insight to origin of bodies in our solar system

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 1039 GMT (6:39 a.m. EDT) Friday, the European Space Agency (ESA) 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 ($2.07 billion Canadian) 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. Scientists have already heralded several discoveries from the mission that offer new insights into the formation of the solar system and the origins of life on Earth.

Spectacular images taken by the orbiter and its comet lander revealed a desertlike landscape with wide, featureless regions but also high cliffs and sinkholes.

The shape of 67P itself — two orbs connected by a “neck” — surprised scientists when Rosetta first got up close. Researchers now believe the orbs formed independently and later merged into one.

NASA scientist Jessica Sunshine said the way the comet was formed has implications for the model of how other objects in the solar system, including Earth, formed about 4.5 billion years ago.