Rosetta discovered organic compounds on the comet Churyumova - Gerasimenko

Despite the overall success, the Rosetta’s mission was in some way unsuccessful : the Fila’s harpoons, which were supposed to fix it on the comet’s surface, did not work, and the connection with the descent vehicle was lost due to the small amount of sunlight needed for powering the solar panels and recharging the batteries.

The sun shines on Philae 90 minutes a day instead of the expected seven hours. Now the descent vehicle due to the lack of energy is “asleep”; it can only send data obtained as a result of the previous stages of scientific research. The device worked only 60 hours on the surface of the comet. Perhaps, when the comet comes closer to the Sun, the light intensity will be enough for work, but this is only hope.

Now the probe is unlikely to be used for research, and 26.7 kilograms of scientific equipment are lying on the surface as a dead weight. But before finally stalling, Filas managed to send information about the presence of a comet in the atmosphere of organic compounds. This was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, citing a German organization participating in the project.
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Now experts determine the presence of complex compounds (for example, amino acids) and more simple (methane or methanol), which are building blocks in the construction of proteins. More about the substances found so far not reported.

Does this mean that the substances necessary for the birth of life could have come to Earth from bodies like the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko? So far this is only a hypothesis.

The first relatively successful landing on such a celestial object was not only a great success for science, it can also be described as one of the most popular space missions of recent years: in 24 hours, the Rosetta program on Twitter was mentioned almost half a million times. This is a great merit of the European Space Agency, which only cost animated videos with cute personalization of spacecraft.

Another successful attempt to conduct studies of celestial bodies of this size can be called the work of the Hayabus apparatus of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. As part of the project, soil samples from the Itokawa asteroid were even delivered to Earth. On November 30 of this year, it is planned to launch Hayabusa-2 for a similar mission, but now to the asteroid (162173) 1999 JU3.

In addition, as part of the OSIRIS-REx program, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will launch a probe to study the asteroid (101955) Bennu in 2016. More planned missions to the small planets yet.

According to the International Business Times .