Rosetta's comet leaves scientists baffled by mysterious sounds recorded near 67P ahead of Philae landing
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Something strange is happening on comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko 67P as space engineers prepare for a historic landing: the icy space rock is 'singing'.
The mysterious sound has baffled scientists, who recorded it using a Rosetta instrument originally designed to analyse the comet's magnetic field.
Instead, this instrument picked up a strange bubbling sound which scientists believe was created by a stream of electrically-charged particles.
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Something strange is happening on comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko 67P as space engineers prepare for a historic landing: the icy space rock is 'singing'
'This is exciting because it is completely new to us,' said Karl-Heinz Glaßmeier, principal investigator with Rosetta's Plasma Consortium.
'We did not expect this and we are still working to understand the physics of what is happening.'
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The comet is 'singing' at 40-50 millihertz, but the human ear only picks up sound between 20 Hz and 20 kHz.
Because the original audio is below the threshold of human hearing, Professor Glaßmeier has created a recording with the pitch magnified a thousand times.
Click below to play the audio
TOUCHDOWN ON THE COMET: PHILAE'S DETAILED LANDING TIMELINE
Rosetta will release Philae at 08:35 GMT/09:35 CET on 12 November at a distance. Pictured is an artist's impression of the lander on Comet 67P
Rosetta will release Philae at 08:35 GMT/09:35 CET on 12 November at a distance of 14 miles (22.5km) from the centre of the comet.
The landing will be about seven hours later at around 15:30 GMT/16:30 CET.
During the descent, Philae will take images and conduct science experiments, sampling the dust, gas and plasma environment close to the comet.
It will take a 'farewell' image of the Rosetta orbiter shortly after separation, along with a number of images as it approaches the comet surface.
It is expected that the first images from this sequence will be received on Earth several hours after separation.
Once safely on the surface, Philae will take a panorama of its surroundings. Again, this is expected back on Earth several hours later.
The first sequence of surface science experiments will begin about an hour after touchdown and will last for 64 hours, constrained by the lander's primary battery lifetime.
Longer-term study of the comet by Philae will depend on for how long and how well the batteries are able to recharge, which is related to the amount of dust that settles on its solar panels.
It is expected that by March 2015, as the comet moves closer in its orbit towards the sun, temperatures inside the lander will have reached levels too high to continue operations, and Philae's science mission will come to an end.
But the Rosetta orbiter's mission will continue for much longer. It will accompany the comet as it grows in activity until their closest approach to the sun in August 2015 and then as they head back towards the outer solar system.
The music was heard clearly by the magnetometer experiment for the first time in August, when Rosetta drew to within 60 miles (100 km) of 67P.
Scientists think it must be produced in some way by the activity of the comet, as it releases neutral particles into space where they become electrically charged due to a process called ionisation.
While the precise physical process behind the oscillations remains a mystery, flight engineers hope it might prove useful in guiding the descent of the Philae lander tomorrow morning.
This is the first time in history that anyone has attempted to land on a comet, and scientists hope the data will help them unravel how the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.
Tomorrow morning, tensions at Rosetta mission control (pictured) in Darmstadt Germany will be running high as space engineers attempt to land Philae onto the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
The comet is currently 300 million miles away (480 million km), and is travelling through space at about 34,000 mph (55,000 km/h).
Rosetta has chased 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko through space for more than ten years in what has been described as 'the sexiest, most fantastic mission ever'.
After a four billion mile (6.5 billion km) journey, it is now positioned in an orbit 19 miles (30 km) away from 67P.
When it was launched in 2004, Rosetta was so far from 67P that it had to pass Earth three times and Mars once, so that it could use the planets' gravity to slingshot its way deep into the solar system.
At 08.35 GMT tomorrow, mission control in Darmstadt, Germany will send a command to release the Philae probe from Rosetta's grip.
The probe will then be in free fall for seven hours, before landing on the icy surface of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
If all goes to plan, Philae should send a signal back to mission control engineers at around 4pm GMT.
The Philae probe aims to analyse the comet in more detail than Rosetta could. The results, Esa claims, could completely rewrite the history of how the Earth formed.
The daring descent Philae (artist's impression shown) will take seven hours from separation. It will be exactly nine years that a similar landing attempt on an asteroid by Japan's Hayabusa failed in 2005
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