Media Advisory: Rice Space Institute statement on comet landing

STATEMENT

David Ruth
david@rice.edu
713-348-6327

Rice Space Institute statement on comet landing

HOUSTON – (Nov. 12, 2014) – With the first-ever successful landing of a spacecraft on a comet shortly after 10 a.m. CST, the Rice Space Institute issued the following statement about the European Space Agency’s Rosetta orbiter’s mission and its Philae lander touching down on Comet 67P.

Comment by Patricia Reiff, associate director for outreach at the Rice Space Institute and professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University:

“This landing marks a major milestone in the exploration of space: the first landing on a pristine comet nucleus, some of the most ancient material in the solar system,” Reiff said. “The landing, on a strangely-shaped dual-lobe spinning target, is especially tricky, since any communication to the spacecraft takes nearly an hour round trip at the speed of light. We congratulate the European Space Agency on this historic achievement and look forward to the data from this mission as the comet approaches the sun.”

To learn more about the Rosetta orbiter and Philae lander, visit http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/.

To schedule an interview with Reiff, contact David Ruth, director of national media relations at Rice, at 713-348-6327 or david@rice.edu.

Rice University has a VideoLink ReadyCam TV interview studio. ReadyCam is capable of transmitting broadcast-quality standard-definition and high-definition video directly to all news media organizations around the world 24/7.

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