CONSERT

CONSERT (COmet Nucleus Sounding Experiment by Radiowave Transmission) is a scientific experiment on board the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission, launched in 2004, to provide information about the deep interior of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko upon the probe's rendezvous with the comet in 2014.[1]

The CONSERT radar was to perform tomography of the nucleus by measuring electromagnetic wave propagation from the Philae lander and the Rosetta orbiter throughout the comet nucleus in order to determine its internal structures and to deduce information on its composition.[2] The related lander and orbiter electronics were provided by France and both antennas were constructed in Germany. The experiment was designed and built in France by Laboratoire de Planétologie de Grenoble (LPG now IPAG) and by Service d'Aéronomie in Paris (SA now LATMOS), in Germany by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Göttingen. The Principal Investigator of CONSERT is Dr. Wlodek Kofman (IPAG), Director of Research at CNRS.

On 13 November 2014, the experiment unexpectedly provided information to locate Philae after it had bounced into an unknown place.[3]

  1. ^ "PHILAE". NASA, National Space Science Data Center. Archived from the original on 20 September 2008. Retrieved 27 August 2014.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference nssdc-consert-exp. was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "Living with a comet: a CONSERT team perspective | Rosetta". rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov. Archived from the original on 2019-08-24. Retrieved 2019-08-24.