Low cost development for the Rosetta Lander French subsystems: Lessons learned

Abstract

After the delay of the Rosetta mission launch, previously planned in January 2003, this mission, led by ESA, will finally be launched from Kourou by Ariane V G+ at the beginning of next year (2004). After a long trip, the spacecraft will reach the comet Churyumov Gerasimenko in 2014. The mission includes a lander, built by an European consortium under German leadership (DLR), on which France has a large participation and is concerned by providing a part of the payload and some lander sub-systems, as well as the navigation and support operation center. Among these, CNES delivers a specific battery assembly and the orbiter lander telecommunication system. This particular mission is going very far from the Sun imposing hard and specific constraints such as very low mass allocation, limited volume and limited power allocations. Taking into account these constraints, specific developments have been made, based principally on “off-the-shelf” component procurement, the use of past experience and also the use of highly integrated electronic components, available only in commercial version.