Talk about a long mission! 10 years to get to 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko! Here's more information on the mission.

Good to see the Ariane 5 finally settling down and performing at nominal!

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Here's some more information

Mission update


http://www.esrin.esa.it/export/esaMI...OH374OD_0.html

http://www.esrin.esa.it/export/esaMI...NIHHZTD_0.html






observation of Comet Linear, was a first positive test for Rosetta's ultimate goal







http://www.esrin.esa.it/export/esaMI...X5474OD_0.html

http://www.esrin.esa.it/export/esaMI...Y5474OD_0.html

As opposed to forty for Gravity Probe B?

some more informations



The Cruise 1 Phase formally started on 7 June 2004 and will last until the start of the second and last commissioning slot in September/October 2004.

At the end of the last New Norcia pass in the reporting period (DOY 163, 01:40) Rosetta was at 49 million km from the Earth. The one-way signal travel time was 2 minutes 44 seconds.



Try this website

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

it has a great flash animation so you can examine the planet, rosseta craft and comet

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Cooking on a comet...?

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Baked Alaska, yum. (Hold the dust, tar and cyanide compounds, please...)

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Fin
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Positive Charge for Rosetta

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23 February 2005
ESA's comet-chaser Rosetta will make a fly-by of planet Earth on 4 March 2005, and sky watchers should be able to see it with telescopes or binoculars if the sky is clear! Read on for details of ESA's 'Rosetta Up Close' photo contest.

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMMTBYEM4E_index_0.html



This fly-by manoeuvre will swing the three-tonne Rosetta spacecraft around our planet and out towards Mars

ESA now has details of the imaging contest announced - there is a copy linked from NASAWatch at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=16246. I am among those not eligible, but will still try a shot from campus before dawn on the 4th. One thing that some of the secondary press coverage misses is that closest approach happens over the day side of the planet, so that even though it's closest to Mexico, the Americas don't get a useful view right around then - in fact, looking at JPL's Horizons ephemeris site, viewers in North America lose it for over 36 hours around that time. The Canary Islands might have the best view, now that I think of it.

take a snapshot as it does a fly-by of Earth
it would make a nice photo 8)

hm. looks like it doesn't get above a couple of degrees above the horizon, and that not until just before dawn. that's here in washington state, us. too bad; i'm having a little star party that night.

oh, well, we should be able to get some nice views of saturn and jupiter anyway...

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it's there in the sky, people have been taking photos since the 28th of Feb
http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod200...ugentobler.gif
Swiss skywatcher's photo of Rosetta
photo contest - Contest Prize : 1st Place is 2 VIP tickets to attend Venus Express launch event at the Operations centre in Darmstadt Germany

As of 0520 UT on March 4, I just saw Rosetta with our campus 0.4m telescope from pretty light-polluted skies. Very crudely I'd say about magnitude 11, motion made the ID clear within about 5 minutes (since its motion is still almost radial to us). Alas, SBIG is still awaiting chips to send our nice big CCD imager. But anyway, this should encourage folks to go out and have a look even this far before closest encounter!

Images: http://www.rssd.esa.int/SB/ROSETTA/include/Images.html

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Rosetta performs flyby

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Here's where Rosetta is heading...Comet 67P/Churyumov- Gerasimenko.

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Rosetta looks back: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMV5LD3M5E_FeatureWeek_0.html

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Rosetta captures moonrise: http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEMU...panding_0.html

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

This is sort of cool - after I had a peek at Rosetta only hours earlier, it looked back. I was under one of the southwestern cloud bands in that shot of the southern Appalachians (which basically covers northern and central Alabama). In fact, for this part of the country, that may be the most topographically clear satellite picture I've seen.