 The end is near! The end is near! And indeed, the end is here for a mission that has revealed to us more about the origins of the Solar System than we expected. The European Space Agency's Rosetta probe will be landing itself on the surface of a comet. And this is your space pod for September 28, 2016. The incredible story of Rosetta is one that begins well before its launch. And in fact, the origins of Rosetta can be traced back to a mission that was designed in the 1980s that never got off of the CAD terminal. CROF, Comet rendezvous asteroid flyby, was proposed in 1986 as a part of NASA's Mariner Mark II program, an attempt to generate cost-effective probes after the multi-billion-dollar flagships of the 1970s. This mission would have launched in 1995 with the flyby of an asteroid and arrival at Comet Cuff in 2000. CROF would have spent three years in proximity of the comet as it orbited the sun and eventually fire a penetrator probe into the comet which would be sampled by an onboard laboratory. This collaborative mission between NASA and ESA, however great it would sound, would never go beyond the conceptual design phase. U.S. Congressional meddling would cause funding to be dropped in 1992 in favor of continuing the Cassini-Huygens mission. ESA still wanted a cometary mission and decided to pursue it themselves once the U.S. Congress cut NASA funding and thusly Rosetta was born. The main bus of Rosetta measures two by 2.1 by 2 meters. The 3,000 kilogram spacecraft weight included Filet, a 100 kilogram washing machine sized lander, two solar arrays measuring 14 meters long, power Rosetta with up to 1500 watts. Originally scheduled to launch on an Ariane 5 on January 13, 2003, Rosetta would be targeting 46P Virtinen, but a failure of the Ariane 5 during a launch in 2002 delayed the mission by a year, with new launch finally occurring on March 2, 2004, with comet 67P Turuyamov-Gerasimenko as the new target. A complicated trajectory to allow Rosetta to catch 67P was designed. It included a gravitational assist from the Earth in 2005, a gravitational assist from Mars in 2007, another gravitational assist with Earth in 2007 as well. In 2008, Rosetta performed a flyby of asteroid Steins, which allowed for a test of Rosetta's scientific package and navigation systems. Another gravitational assist of Earth was performed in 2009, setting Rosetta out on its final orbit to rendezvous with 67P. In 2010, Rosetta performed another asteroid flyby, this time of Lutetia, a large asteroid. After this, Rosetta put itself into hibernation, its trajectory nearly taking it to the orbit of Jupiter. Finally, on January 20, 2014, the spacecraft was pulled out of its 31-month hibernation. Approach of 67P began with the series of burns in May, 2014, and finally in August of 2014, Rosetta entered into orbit, the first spacecraft to orbit a comet. November of 2014 found Philae drop to the surface on an ambitious first landing on a comet. Philae took eight hours to fall to the surface, but its harpoons to keep it attached did not fire, and it spent the next three hours tumbling over the surface until it landed in a crevice. Cut off from the solar energy it needed to power itself, it spent three days gathering data and transmitting that back to Rosetta before it finally died. Rosetta then spent the better part of the next two years orbiting 67P, studying it from up close and as far as it made its closest pass to the Sun. So, what did Rosetta and Philae teach us? We learned that the isotopes of water found on and from 67P are significantly different from the isotopes of water found here on Earth, meaning that we now hypothesized comets delivered less of the water on Earth than we originally expected. We also found a significant amount of schnapps on 67P, and no, not that kind of schnapps. This kind of schnapps, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. The six elements that are critical for life are found in abundance on 67P, meaning more of the organics needed for life could have been delivered by comets. Rosetta will now finish its mission by descending to the surface after a collision maneuver will aim it towards the surface of the comet. Its scientific instrumentation will operate all the way down, but as for what happens upon impact at one meter per second, well, no one truly knows. The European Space Agency expects to lose contact immediately, as Rosetta wasn't designed to land on any sort of a surface. But back in 2001, near Shoemaker, a NASA mission landed on the surface of asteroid Eros, and it wasn't designed to land on a surface. So who knows what will happen, but I sure do await whatever it does. Thanks for watching This Space Pod, I'm Jared Head. So, tell me in the comments below, what was your favorite part of the Rosetta mission since it's now wrapping up? Also, of course, don't forget to find us all over social media, on Facebook, on Twitter, on YouTube, or everywhere that you can possibly think of. And of course, we've got to thank all of our patrons of our Space Pod Patreon. Yes, these folks are why we are able to make these Space Pods happen. If it weren't for these folks, we would not be doing this right now. We would be off doing something else, like my actual homework that I need to do. If you'd like to help crowd fund the Space Pods of tomorrow, head on over to patreon.com. So, until the next Space Pod, keep exploring!