Reflections

Artist's impression of Rosetta's descent on the comet on 30 September 2016. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

Some ten weeks have passed since Rosetta ended its mission on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, and it is time for a little reflection here on the Rosetta blog...

Over the past three years, we have written over 670 posts covering mission operations, science highlights, special events, images of the comet, and so much more. The blog has become a reference for a wide audience, ranging from science journalists to space enthusiasts, from casual readers to educators and even Rosetta mission scientists and operators.

Beyond that, it has become a place for people to share their ideas and concerns. When we re-launched the blog in 2013, we did not expect the huge number of comments that came in – almost 18,600 to date – and certainly we didn’t envision the considerable amount of time needed to moderate them! But we learned a lot from the comments, some of which became lengthy discussions, and which on occasion triggered new blog posts or direct engagement between readers and mission experts.

However, with the flight phase of the mission now over there are obviously no longer any news updates to share about current operations, and so we have decided to close the blog. We will soon publish our last post and close the comments section for good, although naturally, all of the material will remain online for the foreseeable future.

And of course, we will keep writing about new scientific results based on data from the mission as they’re published, and news such as updates on the availability of data in the public archives. These will be reported via our websites (Space Science Portal and Science & Technology) and on social media, especially via our @esascience Twitter account.

It's been an amazing and intense three years for us, and we hope that you also enjoyed the ride. It has been our pleasure to have you join in. As a final farewell, we would like to invite all blog readers to tell us a little about yourselves – after all, many of the contributors to the comment section are long since familiar to us by their names and nicknames, but in many cases, we don’t know a lot more.

So, make a comment to this post and feel free to tell us when, how, and why you became interested in Rosetta/comets/space science in general, how you found out about the blog, whether you followed it regularly, and what you enjoyed (or disliked!) most about it.

As ever, there are rules, however:: only one comment allowed per contributor and, as usual, off-topic posts will not be published

In your comment to this post, feel free to tell us when, how and why you became interested in Rosetta/comets/space science in general, how you found out about the blog, whether you followed it regularly and what you enjoyed most about it.

The comment function of the blog will be deactivated before the holiday break, so please post your comments before then.

We are looking forward to reading your contributions!

Best wishes,

– The Rosetta blog team

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