Ottawa company provided software for Rosetta comet mission

An Ottawa company is celebrating the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission after contributing engineering software to help guide the spacecraft.

Richard Ladouceur, manager of space solutions at the ADGA Group, said it was a proud moment Wednesday, watching the spacecraft make history by landing on the icy surface of a comet speeding through space.

"When they decided to manoeuvre Rosetta to approach the comet, that manoeuvre alone required that we write 1,000 procedures. So writing those procedures and making sure that they don't impact negatively the rest of the mission, that's where [our software] comes into play," Ladouceur says.

The Rosetta mission has been a decade in the making.

The spacecraft's Philae lander will send information about the comet's makeup back to earth. Researchers hope that will teach them about the origins of the universe.

It's a major feat celebrated around the world, and in Ottawa.

"Not many days that you can actually say, ... 'We landed on a comet.' And there's very few people that can lay that claim," says Fran Gagnon, the group's executive vice-president.