An artist's conception of ESA's Rosetta and Philae spacecraft approaching comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (Credit: ESA-J. Huart, 2013)
On January 20, 2014 it will be time for the snoozing Rosetta spacecraft to awaken from 31 months of hibernation. Through an online contest, ESA has been looking for a little help in sending a wake-up call to the spacecraft, which will be 673 million kilometers from Earth. The “Wake Up Rosetta!” video contest has yielded some heartwarming, funny, and creative videos from families, school children and more. Here are a few of our favorites, and you can go to the contest’s Facebook page to find out how to submit your own video, as well as see more videos and vote for your favorite.
The top ten vote-getting videos will be transmitted out to Rosetta via one of ESA’s deep-space tracking stations, and there are additional prizes as well, including the top two video creators will be invited to the control center in Darmstadt, Germany for when the Philae lander attempts landing on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in November 2014 after latching on with a harpoon.
ESA themselves have come up with a video story of the Rosetta mission and how it will be awakened:
Find out more about Rosetta’s mission here, and the contest here.
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