World eyes up Europe's comet lander

摘要

As their European colleagues put a lander on a comet, US space scientists were thrilled - and a little envious. "It was not perfect, but it was amazing," says Jessica Sunshine, who studies comete at the University of Maryland in College Park. Sunshine's team designed a 'comet hopper' that would have used nuclear batteries to jump slowly across a comet's surface, but NASA declined to fund it in 2012. Now the team is working on an alternative proposal to build on the questions that Philae is starting to raise. But first, the focus is shifting to asteroids. On 30 November, the Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency plans to launch its Hayabusa-2 mission to the asteroid 1999 JU3, which will carry, among other things, a Philae-like lander. In September 2016, NASA aims to launch the OSIRIS-REx probe, which will use a robotic arm to vacuum up samples from the asteroid Bennu, for return to Earth.