BERLIN – After 12 years of hurtling through space in pursuit of a comet, the Rosetta probe ended its mission Friday with a slow-motion crash onto the icy surface of the alien world it was sent out to study.
Mission controllers lost contact with the probe, as expected, after it hit the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at 6:39 a.m. EDT Friday, the European Space Agency said.
“Farewell Rosetta, you’ve done the job,” said mission manager Patrick Martin. “That is space science at its best.”
ESA chief Jan Woerner called the $1.57 billion mission a success. Aside from sending a lander onto the surface of comet 67P in November 2014 – a cosmic first – the Rosetta mission has collected vast amounts of data that researchers will spend many years analyzing.
Scientists have already heralded several discoveries from the mission that offer new insights into the formation of the solar system and the origins of life on Earth.
ROME – Police investigating suspected Italian mobsters for cocaine trafficking discovered two Van Gogh paintings hidden in a farmhouse near Naples, masterpieces that had vanished in 2002 during a nighttime heist at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, authorities said Friday.
The two paintings were “considered among the artworks most searched for in the world, on the FBI’s list of the Top 10 art crimes,” Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said.
They were found in a farmhouse near Castellammare di Stabia as Italian police seized some $22 million worth of assets, including farmland, villas and apartments and a small airplane. Investigators contend those assets are linked to two Camorra drug kingpins, Mario Cerrone and Raffaele Imperiale, according to a statement by prosecutors Giovanni Colangelo and Filippo Beatrice.
The recovered masterpieces, propped up on easels, were unveiled for reporters Friday.
Associated Press
