ANDREA Accomazzo: Comet chaser
Former flight testers drive Rosetta icy world of space.
Elizabeth Gibney
Andreas Reeg/agentur Focus/eyevine
Nearly decades ago, Andrea Accomazzo got into trouble with his girlfriend when she found a scrap of paper on his desk. In He handwriting is scrawled a phone number next to a female Name:rosetta.
About 20 years ago, Andrea Accomazzo had a problem with his girlfriend because his girlfriend found a woman's name in his manuscript: Rosetta.
"She thought it was a girl," says Accomazzo. "I had to explain to my jealous Italian girlfriend that Rosetta was an interplanetary mission that's flying to a comet in Almost years. "
Accomazzo said her girlfriend thought it was a woman's name, and I had to think that my jealous girlfriend said it was a starship flying to a comet.
Ever since, Accomazzo have divided his attention. He eventually married his girlfriend and have also spent the past years the comet pursuing. As flight director for the mission, Accomazzo led the team that steered Rosetta to its August rendezvous with the comet, F Ollowing a 6.4-billion-kilometre journey from Earth. The pinnacle of the project came in November, when Rosetta successfully set down a lander named Philae, providing Scientis TS with the first data from the surface of a comet and making it one of the most successful missions in the European Space Agency (ESA).
Not at this time, Accomazzo had to distract him, but in the end he married his girlfriend, and in the year of their marriage, he had been talking for 18 years to chase a name 67p/churyumov–gerasimenko comet. As the head of this mission, Accomazzo led a team operation Rosetta the success of the comet encounter in August, at this time 6.4 billion km from the earth. The mission's key time was that in November this year, Rosetta successfully released the Philae lander, the first time the scientists had returned the comet's surface data, one of the most successful projects in the history of the European Space Agency.
Accomazzo did not act Alone:it took a large operations team at ESA to manoeuvre Rosetta with enough precision to drop Phi Lae down just-metres from the centre of the landing zone. "Given that we ' d had a 500-metre error circle, that is not a bad shot," says Fred Jansen, who led the mission. When Philae ' s anchoring systems failed, the craft bounced to a shady site where it could not charge its solar panels, so The lander lost power after the hours. But in this time, it gathered a trove of data that would add to the information collected by Rosetta about the comet's Stru Cture and composition. Armed with those insights, scientists hope to better understand the origin and evolution of the Solar System, including WH Ether Comets could has brought water and organic molecules to Earth during its infancy.
Accomazzo was not alone, and he and his huge team were careful to control the Rosetta release Philae 120 meters high and landed to the ground. Fred Jansen, the leader of the project, said that although we had a 500-meter error at that time, it landed quite well. Due to the reason of the surface of the surface, the ground-grabbing device failed, the aircraft fell to the ground and bounced up into a shadow area so that there was not enough sunlight to charge its solar panels, so the aircraft after 64 hours due to the exhaustion of power, but at that time, the aircraft has sent back to earth a lot of comet structure and composition data. This data allows scientists to better understand the birth and evolution of the solar system, including whether comets carry water and organic molecules to earth in the early days.
Accomazzo started off his career focused on a different type of flight. He first trained as a test pilot in the Italian Air force. But although he loved flying, he found the culture too constraining and after both years he quit to study aerospace Enginee Ring. With He quiet, hard-working, sometimes no-nonsense nature, colleagues say that Accomazzo brings a bit of the military wit h him into mission control.
Accomazzo's first career was a pilot, serving the Italian Air Force. Although he loved flying, the army was too restrictive, and two years later he began to learn about space engines. In his quiet efforts and even harsh work, he began to lead some soldiers with him to start the project control tasks.
For Accomazzo, the biggest parallel between flying a fighter jet and Rosetta are the need for split-second judgements. "You had to prepare and train a lot to being able to make the right decision, very quickly," he says. Between launch and landing, his team ran full-day simulations.
For Accomazzo, the greatest common denominator for flight and control Rosetta is the need for quick emergency response capabilities. He says you have to go through a lot of preparation and exercise to be able to make quick decisions at the critical time. For launch and landing projects, he and the team have been simulating for 87 days.
Although the Rosetta mission have been a broad success, Accomazzo still cried when he heard that Philae had died, and hopes The lander would revive when the comet approaches the Sun. After swinging around the Sun in August, the comet would head back out of towards deep space.
Although Rosetta's mission had been successful, he cried after hearing the news of Philae's death, hoping that the lander would revive when the comet approached the sun, and by August 2015 the lander would have been exposed to the sun.
By early, there would be too little sunlight to power Rosetta, and Accomazzo is planning a daring finale. He would love to see the craft skim above the surface of the rubber-duck-shaped comet through the valley that separates it s body and head. The team might even try to land the spacecraft on the comet ' s surface.
By the beginning of the 2017, the sun will be reduced to Rosetta, Accomazzo consider retiring at that time. He likes to see pictures of the rugged surface and the disordered valleys from the return of the comet's surface. His team even considered taking the entire flight information to the surface of the comet.
The decision might not being up to him. Accomazzo is stepping away from the day-to-day flight operations at Rosetta and was busy preparing for ESA ' s interplanetary Missions to Mercury, Mars and Jupiter. Even with such exciting projects, he finds it hard to leave Rosetta. "It's a bit sad," he says. "I don ' t know how I'll be able to cope."
The decision may not be up to him, Accomazzo is no longer in control, and has begun preparing for the European Space Agency's plan to land Mercury, Mars and Jupiter. Having experienced this exciting project, it's hard for him to put Rosetta behind his head. He said a little sad and didn't know how to comfort himself.
He still dreams of Rosetta. "This morning I woke to 4 a.m. and thought ' something is wrong '," he says. "At 7.30 a.m.". I got a call-rosetta had briefly lost signal to Earth at 4 A.m.-i often has this kind of episode. I ' m totally linked. "
He is still imagining the Rosetta, he said: "I woke up four o'clock in the morning today, I feel there is nothing wrong, seven in the morning, I received a call, they said Rosetta in this morning four points and the Earth lost contact, I often have this illusion, I have been completely trapped in."
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