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

__________________
"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

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.

__________________
GhiaPet Home Page

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

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.

__________________
GhiaPet Home Page

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.

__________________

Any comments in glorious red are to be considered in ModeratorMode.


善數, 不用籌策 (shàn shù, bù yòng chóu cè)
He who is good at counting, uses no counting tools
“A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is”
道德經, 二十七 (dào dé jīng, 27)

Rosetts performs first scientific observations

__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

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

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

flash animation of its journey

images, now processed, are part of the first scientific data obtained by Rosetta. http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Rosetta/SEMT4V2IU7E_0.html

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

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.

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)

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.

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....

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

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.

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

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

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?

__________________
Keeper of the Jabberwock

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.

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.

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

__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

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).

__________________
Keeper of the Jabberwock

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.

Rosetta, cracking the code!

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

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!

__________________
New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

Planetary Society Weblog: Rosetta is closing in on Earth

2057 UTC
1557 EST
1257 PST

__________________
0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

Some fly by images of Antarctica taken 13/14 November

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

"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

Cool, we look like a night sky.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

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

__________________
"Who does not know anything, must believe everything."
Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 1830-1916
our animal welfare board and organisation

What are they saying, there really was an NEO ?

Dont worry about it, Bruce Willis can save us