Champollion was a planned

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ar ...

ary rendezvous and landing

spacecraft A spacecraft is a vehicle or machine designed to fly in outer space. A type of artificial satellite, spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, Earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, p ...

. It was named after

Jean-François Champollion Jean-François Champollion (), also known as Champollion ''le jeune'' ('the Younger'; 23 December 17904 March 1832), was a French philologist and orientalist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in th ...

, a French Egyptologist known for translating the

Rosetta Stone The Rosetta Stone is a stele composed of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a Rosetta Stone decree, decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle te ...

Rosetta surface science package

As originally envisaged, the joint

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

CNES The (CNES; French: ''Centre national d'études spatiales'') is the French government space agency (administratively, a "public administration with industrial and commercial purpose"). Its headquarters are located in central Paris and it is und ...

Champollion was to be one of two surface science packages for the

Rosetta mission ''Rosetta'' was a space probe built by the European Space Agency launched on 2 March 2004. Along with ''Philae'', its lander module, ''Rosetta'' performed a detailed study of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (67P). During its journey to the c ...

to comet Wirtanen, alongside the German-led

RoLand Roland (; frk, *Hrōþiland; lat-med, Hruodlandus or ''Rotholandus''; it, Orlando or ''Rolando''; died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the ...

. Champollion was to provide for return of cometary samples to Earth. This part of the Rosetta mission was withdrawn in late 1996 due to lack of funding from

JPL The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...

Deep Space 4 / Space Technology 4

Champollion was revived under NASA's

New Millennium Program New Millennium Program (NMP) was a NASA project with focus on engineering validation of new technologies for space applications. Funding for the program was eliminated from the FY2009 budget by the 110th United States Congress, effectively leading ...

as Deep Space 4 / Space Technology 4, again as a joint project of NASA and CNES. In this version, Champollion would be a stand-alone project consisting of an orbiter and a lander, with the focus shifted somewhat to engineering validation of new technologies rather than pure science. As of March 1999, the baseline mission was to launch in April 2003, reaching comet

Tempel 1 Tempel 1 (official designation: 9P/Tempel) is a periodic Jupiter-family comet discovered by Wilhelm Tempel in 1867. It completes an orbit of the Sun every 5.5 years. Tempel 1 was the target of the ''Deep Impact'' space mission, which photograph ...

in 2006. The sample return element of the mission was at this point contingent on sufficient funding/resources, possibly being replaced with a demonstration of related capabilities. The lander was approximately 1.5m high weighing 160 kg; it was to autonomously navigate to the comet from 50 km altitude and anchor itself with a spike. The planned payload included: *CHARGE, a

gas chromatograph Gas chromatography (GC) is a common type of chromatography used in analytical chemistry for separating and analyzing compounds that can be vaporized without decomposition. Typical uses of GC include testing the purity of a particular substance, ...

mass spectrometer Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique that is used to measure the mass-to-charge ratio of ions. The results are presented as a ''mass spectrum'', a plot of intensity as a function of the mass-to-charge ratio. Mass spectrometry is used ...

*CIRCLE, cameras/microscope/ IR spectrometer *CIVA, panoramic cameras *CPPP, "physical properties probes" to be driven into the cometary surface *SATM drill mechanism *

gamma ray A gamma ray, also known as gamma radiation (symbol γ or \gamma), is a penetrating form of electromagnetic radiation arising from the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei. It consists of the shortest wavelength electromagnetic waves, typically ...

/ neutron spectrometer The orbiter was to carry cameras and a dust monitor. Later in 1999, Space Technology 4 was scaled back to a single spacecraft with no sample return; it was cancelled entirely on July 1, 1999, due to budgetary constraints.

References

External links

* {{New Millennium Program Proposed NASA space probes Cancelled spacecraft New Millennium Program

Rosetta surface science package

Deep Space 4 / Space Technology 4

See also

References

External links