Rosetta is on its way!

[kucharek]

Nearly...

http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Rosetta/index.html

Upper stage iginition in 7 minutes...

Unfortunatley, the BA doesn't allows countdowns here... ;-)

Keep your fingers crossed!

Harald

[JohnOwens]

I forgot, how does CET relate to GMT? 1 hour or two? (It IS "Central European Time", right?

Regardless, it looks like the countdown we aren't having can come to an end now; the link now says it's off.

Edit: Oops, I see you were counting down to upper stage, rather than to launch. Never mind my second point.

[kucharek]

I forgot, how does CET relate to GMT? 1 hour or two? (It IS "Central European Time", right?

Yes, CET is GMT+1. When DST starts (end of March), it will be CEST and GMT+2.

[JohnOwens]

OK, when I went to Germany, it was in April, and I never did clear up whether the two hours was due to DST, or if they had an extra time zone between Germany and Greenwich. Glad I know that now, if I ever go back.

[tusenfem]

Wow, it only took us here in Graz 3 parties to organize for the launch, but finally yesterday we could open the bottles of champagne (well, mostly prosecco actually). Go Rosetta Go!
And to clear up the times:
Europe apart from Britain naturally is on GMT+1, but the last sunday in March we change to DST (no not the deep sky telescope, daylight savings time) which puts us at GMT+2. So in April ... well you can figure it out.
Think about it, before WW2 there were many more non-1-hour zones, the Netherlands were, e.g. Berlin time - 40', i.e. GMT+20', that would be really confusing.

[ToSeek]

Rosetts performs first scientific observations

Rosetta has successfully performed its first scientific activity - observation of Comet Linear.

[Manchurian Taikonaut]

Report for the period 17 to 27 January 2005


The spacecraft is in cruise mode. In the reporting period a number of outstanding troubleshooting activities was carried out, in addition to the routine flight operations and monitoring tasks.



On 17 January a CCD health check on Star Tracker B was carried out, to confirm the existence of a hot pixel detected in December by the on-board software. This activity triggered other investigations on both Star Trackers, as on the same day Star Tracker A also detected a hot pixel. After power cycling both Star Trackers did not report any hot pixel anymore. A final CCD Health check was executed on 27 January and data are still being analysed.
....
At the end of the last New Norcia pass in the reporting period (DOY 027) Rosetta was at 13.4 million Km from the Earth. The one-way signal travel time was 44 sec.

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/obj...fobjectid=2279

http://www.esa.int/export/esaMI/Rosetta/

flash animation of its journey

[Manchurian Taikonaut]

images, now processed, are part of the first scientific data obtained by Rosetta.

“The Earth fly-by represented the first real chance to calibrate and validate the performance of the Rosetta’s instruments on a real space object, to make sure everything works fine at the final target”

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Rosetta/SEMT4V2IU7E_0.html

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publ...to.html?352005

[Manchurian Taikonaut]

Status report
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/obj...objectid=37699
Quote
18 Jul 2005 16:09
Report for period 24 June to 15 July 2005

The spacecraft is in active cruise mode. The reporting period covers the first active science phase of the mission, dedicated to the observation of the NASA Deep Impact probe's encounter with comet Tempel-1.

The spacecraft was slewed to point its remote sensing payload instruments towards comet Tempel-1 on 28 June. The comet was constantly tracked until 14 July, following a complex profile designed to satisfy the observation requirements of the four active instruments, ALICE, MIRO, OSIRIS and VIRTIS. Three of the remote sensing instruments were active continuously from 29 June to 14 July. VIRTIS was operated only for a few hours around the predicted time of encounter of Deep Impact with the comet, on 4 July. Daily passes were taken with the New Norcia station throughout the reporting period, to downlink the scientific data collected during the observations. An average of 60 Mbytes of data were produced and downlinked every day.

The observation campaign was very successful. All instruments operated very well and their science data were collected as planned and are undergoing the first analyses. A few problems occurred with the commanding timing of OSIRIS and with the MIRO instrument but could be recovered in both cases within about 24 hours, with minor impact on the overall instrument operations and data return. The exercise was the first scientific planning and operations scenario over large scale and an extended period of time for the Rosetta mission. It provided an important experience and a wealth of lessons learned which will be very useful to design the spacecraft operations around Rosetta's target comet 67 P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Rosetta/ESAGJF7708D_0.html

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is a large dirty snowball that orbits the Sun once every 6.6 years. During this time, it commutes between the orbits of Jupiter and the Earth. However, little is known about it, despite its regular visits to the inner Solar System.
Rosetta will fly past Mars in February 2007, and two more Earth flybys: November 2007 and November 2009.

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Rosetta/SEMRZF1PGQD_0.html

Animation of Rosetta's 12-year journey,
It performs three fly-bys of Earth and one fly-by of Mars, reaching the comet in 2014.

[Launch window]

Rosetta report

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/obj...objectid=38105

At the end of the reporting period (DOY 280) Rosetta was at 226.2 million km from Earth (1.51 AU; one-way signal travel time was 12 minutes and 34 seconds). The distance to the Sun was 252.4 million km (1.69 AU)

[Manchurian Taikonaut]

Spacecraft Monitoring and Maintenance

12 Dec 2005 13:00
Report for Period 18 November to 9 December 2005

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/obj...objectid=38408

The reporting period covers three weeks of passive cruise, with monitoring and minor maintenance activities.

On the spacecraft subsystems side, minor maintenance activities were executed, i.e. gyro drift compensation for IMP B, the first periodic dump of avionics standard parameters. Reaction wheel offloading is now executed once every two weeks.

[Launch window]

for Period 9 December 2005 - 6 January 2006

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/obj...objectid=38558
...At the end of the reporting period (DOY 006) Rosetta was at 360 million km from the Earth (2.40 AU; one-way signal travel time was 20m 00 s). The distance to Sun was 262 million Km (1.75 AU).
Future Milestones
Preparation for the first Solar Conjunction continues. The spacecraft will be at an angular distance from the Sun below 5 degrees between mid March and mid May 2006, with a minimum separation angle of about 0.3 degrees on the 13 April.
Just before the start of the Solar Conjunction the third Payload Passive Checkout (PC2) will take place in March 2006.
After the Solar Conjunction the spacecraft will be configured into Near Sun Hibernation Mode for a period of about 2 months, from end May to end July 2006.
Operations for the Mars swing-by (February 2007) will start in August 2006....

[Launch window]

Rosetta images were submitted by amateur astronomers in Europe, Africa, Canada and USA for the "Rosetta Up Close" photo contest.
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/...est/index.html


more on it here
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/i...topic=873&st=0
http://s4.invisionfree.com/RPGRMXP/i...showtopic=1428

[Manchurian Taikonaut]

Report for Period 2 June to 30 June 2006
Operational Updates
The spacecraft will remain in Passive Cruise Mode until 26 July 2006. During the entire period, the spacecraft will be monitored on the basis of weekly ground station passes.

[antoniseb]

I'm looking forward to the Mars swingby this winter.

[Lord Jubjub]

Oh, wow, I wasn't paying close attention to space exploration at the time of launch. This is definitely something to keep an eye on when it reaches its target.

There would makes four long-term probes in the solar system (Messenger, New Horizons and Dawn[unlaunched] being the other three) that will start to return data in to 2010-2015 time frame. Or are there others that I am not aware of?

[Launch window]

Mission Status
Rosetta Status Report - November 2006
The Rosetta spacecraft and its payload are in excellent health and everything is set to prepare the Mars flyby on 25 February 2007.

[Launch window]

Rosetta and New Horizons watch Jupiter in joint campaign
ESA's Rosetta and NASA's New Horizons are working well together in their joint campaign to observe Jupiter. A preliminary analysis of the data from Rosetta's Alice ultraviolet spectrometer indicates that the data quality is excellent and that good science is expected to follow.

[Launch window]

Rosetta Status Report - May 2007

[ToSeek]

Rosetta's Target Comet: Lumpy, Bumpy, Fluffy And Layered

Observational and theoretical studies of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the target of ESA’s Rosetta mission, are building a detailed portrait of the comet’s nucleus as it travels around the Sun.

[Lord Jubjub]

Since, ToSeek has brought this thread up, I thought I'd just mention that Rosetta is passing inside Mars orbit this week. It had gotten a boost from Mars earlier this year and will get another boost from Earth this November (the second such boost).

[Launch window]

Could comets have brought water and organic materials to Earth?
http://www.euronews.net/index.php?pa...e=451670&lng=1
Europe's Rosetta mission is on route to find out. The spacecraft swings by the Earth this month, gaining speed on its 10- year quest. The ambitious race to catch a comet and probe the history of our solar system, in this editon of Space.

[KaiYeves]

Rosetta, cracking the code!

[eburacum45]

Rosetta not an asteroid, experts say.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/n...nd/7088754.stm

Also noted on this thread, I see...
Non-NEO Alert!

[01101001]

Planetary Society Weblog: Rosetta is closing in on Earth

We're less than an hour away from Rosetta's Earth flyby; closest approach will happen south of South America at 20:57 UTC. The Rosetta flyby blog has some neat photos of screens of data being transmitted real-time from the spacecraft.

2057 UTC
1557 EST
1257 PST

[Launch window]

Some fly by images of Antarctica taken 13/14 November

http://esamultimedia.esa.int/multime...cam/index.html

[Launch window]

"When it captured this image, Rosetta was about 80,000 km (50,000 miles) away from the Earth, above the Indian Ocean. It imaged the planet using its OSIRIS instrument."
http://www.universetoday.com/2007/11...hs-night-side/


New pics

OSIRIS images
- first downloads
http://webservices.esa.int/page.php?id=37976


Where is Rosetta now

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Rosetta/SEMRZF1PGQD_0.html

next stop asteroid steins

[Noclevername]

Cool, we look like a night sky.

[Laguna]

Just read on a German news site that rosetta has a companion, possibly an asteroid.

[Launch window]

Just read on a German news site that rosetta has a companion, possibly an asteroid.

What are they saying, there really was an NEO ?

Dont worry about it, Bruce Willis can save us