Estonian camera headed for deep-space mission in 2028
The optical periscope camera OPIC, a scientific instrument bound for Estonia's first deep-space mission, departed Tartu Airport for Spain on Tuesday. The camera will photograph the nucleus of a comet.
The OPIC camera, assembled at Tartu Observatory, is the first deep-space instrument developed in Estonia. Its mission will be to photograph the nucleus of a comet. Scientists hope the camera will help shed light on the formation of the solar system, including Earth, as well as the building blocks of life.
"These comets are leftovers from the material that existed at that time, so by studying them we can estimate what went into forming the solar system. This is particularly important, for example, in the search for the origins of life," said Mihkel Pajusalu, associate professor of space technology at Tartu Observatory.
The camera is designed to photograph a comet traveling from the outer reaches of the solar system toward Earth's vicinity. It will operate autonomously, determining on its own whether a comet is visible in the images it captures.
"Comets have been studied before, but all previously studied comets have been periodic, meaning they have passed by the sun multiple times. As a result, the sun has heated them and blown away their surface material. The aim of this mission is to obtain images of an object making its first approach, one that preserves a chemical snapshot of the moment it formed. That was the same period when the solar system formed — before Earth even existed," Pajusalu said.
The camera has now completed its testing phase and has been sent, together with the team, to the European Space Agency's development team in Spain. If additional testing there is successful, the camera could be launched into space in 2028.
"The camera will initially travel to the Lagrange L2 point, which is about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. It will wait there for up to five years until a comet appears that can be mapped and then it will attempt to fly past it. We don't know which comet it will be — we're trying to study something completely new, something unknown. That's what makes this mission so exciting," said Sten Salumets, lead engineer at Tartu Observatory.
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Editor: Marcus Turovski, Johanna Alvin
