ESA's New Comet Interceptor Mission
When
Where
Dr. Colin Snodgrass
Chancellor’s Fellow
School of Physics and Astronomy
The University of Edinburgh
I’ll describe Comet Interceptor, which was recently selected by the European Space Agency as their first ‘fast’ (F-class) mission. This mission will launch in 2028 with the Ariel space telescope to the Sun-Earth L2 point, where it will wait for up to a few years for a suitable comet to be found, before departing on a trajectory to perform a fast fly-by as the comet approaches 1 au heliocentric distance. Designing and launching a mission before the target is discovered is a challenge, but the only feasible way to encounter a pristine dynamically new comet making its first entry into the inner Solar System from the Oort cloud. At the comet, the three sub-spacecraft that make up the mission will divide; each will perform fast fly-bys along different paths, building up a 3D snapshot of the comet and its interaction with the solar wind.