News of the Comet-hunting Rosetta mission

[Rick]

...and an APOD: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080908.html

[Rick]

...and ESA's press release: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMNMYO4KKF_index_0.html

[Rick]

Baffled Boffins at the European Space Agency (ESA) are hoping that today's Earth fly-by of the Rosetta satellite will shed light on a problem of significant gravity.

At 07:45GMT this morning, the ESA's Rosetta started its third fly-past of the Earth, looking for a gravitational sling-shot. This particular event is being closely watched by scientists on both sides of the Atlantic, as since 1990 a problem has been bothering eggheads at both NASA and ESA.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/13/speeding_satellite/

[Rick]

Europe's Rosetta spacecraft has made its third and final flyby of Earth, a manoeuvre designed to position the probe to chase down a comet in 2014.

The spacecraft's whip around the planet will have given it the extra speed it needs to take it out to the rendezvous location near Jupiter.

Launched in 2004, Rosetta had already flown by Earth twice and Mars once.

The journey out to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will also take the probe past an asteroid in 2010.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8358754.stm

[Rick]

Lutetia: a Rare Survivor from the Birth of the Earth

New observations indicate that the asteroid Lutetia is a leftover fragment of the same original material that formed the Earth, Venus and Mercury. Astronomers have combined data from ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, ESO's New Technology Telescope, and NASA telescopes. They found that the properties of the asteroid closely match those of a rare kind of meteorites found on Earth and thought to have formed in the inner parts of the Solar System. Lutetia must, at some point, have moved out to its current location in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

More: http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1144/

[Rick]

A fleeting flyby of a battered world

The long and tumultuous history of asteroid Lutetia was revealed by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft as it raced past this large, ancient asteroid.

This spectacular movie shows a sequence of images snapped by Rosetta as it flew past the main-belt asteroid on 10 July 2010.

The sequence begins nine and a half hours before Rosetta made its closest pass, when the asteroid still appeared like a distant tumbling speck seen from a distance of 500 000 km.

See: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMXCODXR3H_index_0.html

[Rick]

Asteroid Steins' Hidden Gems (Rosetta)

ESA's Rosetta spacecraft snapped images of asteroid Steins as it flew by the diamond-shaped asteroid on 5 September 2008, revealing a tiny world with a big history of collisions.

The images were taken by Rosetta's Wide Angle Camera as the spacecraft flew within 800 km of the 5 km-wide asteroid, and later processed by amateur astronomer Ted Stryk to produce the image presented here.

More: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Asteroid_Steins_hidden_gems

[Rick]

Rosetta: 100 days to wake-up

ESA's comet-chasing mission Rosetta will wake up in 100 days' time from deep-space hibernation to reach the destination it has been cruising towards for a decade.

Comets are the primitive building blocks of the Solar System and the likely source of much of Earth's water, perhaps even delivering to Earth the ingredients that helped life evolve. By studying the nature of a comet close-up with an orbiter and lander, Rosetta will enable scientists to learn more about the role of comets in the evolution of the Solar System.

Rosetta was launched on 2 March 2004, and through a complex series of flybys – three times past Earth and once past Mars – set course to its destination: comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It also flew by and imaged two asteroids, Steins on 5 September 2008 and Lutetia on 10 July 2010.

More: http://sci.esa.int/rosetta/53055-rosetta-100-days-to-wake-up/

[Rick]

Rosetta: To Chase a Comet

Comets are among the most beautiful and least understood nomads of the night sky. To date, half a dozen of these most heavenly of heavenly bodies have been visited by spacecraft in an attempt to unlock their secrets. All these missions have had one thing in common: the high-speed flyby. Like two ships passing in the night (or one ship and one icy dirtball), they screamed past each other at hyper velocity -- providing valuable insight, but fleeting glimpses, into the life of a comet. That is, until Rosetta.

NASA is participating in the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission, whose goal is to observe one such space-bound icy dirt ball from up close -- for months on end. The spacecraft, festooned with 25 instruments between its lander and orbiter (including three from NASA), is programmed to "wake up" from hibernation on Jan. 20. After a check-out period, it will monitor comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it makes its nosedive into, and then climb out of, the inner solar system. Over 16 months, during which old 67P is expected to transform from a small, frozen world into a roiling mass of ice and dust, complete with surface eruptions, mini-earthquakes, basketball-sized, fluffy ice particles and spewing jets of carbon dioxide and cyanide.

"We are going to be in the cometary catbird seat on this one," said Claudia Alexander, project scientist for U.S. Rosetta from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "To have an extended presence in the neighborhood of a comet as it goes through so many changes should change our perspective on what it is to be a comet."

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-015

[Rick]

Rosetta: Alarm to sound for comet mission

One of the most daring space missions ever undertaken reaches a key milestone on Monday.

Europe's Rosetta probe was launched a decade ago on a long quest to chase down and land on a comet, and has spent the past two-and-half-years in hibernation to try to conserve power.

But at 10:00 GMT, an onboard "alarm clock" is expected to rouse the spacecraft from its slumber.

Rosetta will then warm its systems before sending a signal to Earth.

Receipt of this "I'm awake" message will confirm the great endeavour is still on course.

Rosetta is due to rendezvous with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August.

More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25782249

[MarkS]

How bright will this comet become?

[mickw]

Mag -5 during cloud
Mag 15 when clear

[MarkH]

It lives !!!! I see on the news that it has responded to it's alarm call. Now let the fun begin, looking forward to new information.

[JohnP]

This is quite a cool animation page showing path of Rosetta since launch... Amazing how it catches up & loops by Earth so many times...

https://util1.estec.esa.int/rosetta/where_is_rosetta/

[Rick]

Rosetta's comet wakes up

It's back! After comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko had disappeared behind the Sun and out of the Earth's view last year in October, the target comet of ESA's Rosetta mission can now be seen again. In the most recent image obtained by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) with the help of ESO's Very Large Telescope on February 28th, 2014, the comet presents itself brighter than expected for the nucleus alone. This suggests that frozen ice is already beginning to vaporize and form a very thin atmosphere. In August, the spacecraft Rosetta will rendezvous with 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and accompany it on its journey around the Sun until at least the end of 2015.

More: http://www.mps.mpg.de/3261529/Rosetta_s-comet-wakes-up