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Rosetta visits asteroid (21)Lutetia

Ferri, P.; Lodiot, S.; Accomazzo, A. +3 more

The International Rosetta Mission, cornerstone of the European Space Agency Scientific Programme, was launched on 2nd March 2004 to its 10 years journey to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rosetta will reach the comet in summer 2014, orbit it for about 1.5 years down to distances of a few Kilometres and deliver the Lander Philae onto its surface. Afte…

Rosetta Lander—After seven years of cruise, prepared for hibernation

Ulamec, Stephan; Biele, Jens; Geurts, Koen +10 more

Rosetta is a Cornerstone Mission of the ESA Horizon 2000 programme. It is going to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after a 10 year cruise and will study both its nucleus and coma with an orbiting spacecraft and a landed platform. The latter, named Philae, has been designed to land softly on the comet nucleus and is equipped with 10…

Rosetta enters hibernation

Ferri, Paolo; Accomazzo, Andrea; Hubault, Armelle +3 more

The International Rosetta Mission was launched on 2nd March 2004 on its 10 years journey to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rosetta will reach the comet in 2014, orbit it for about 1.5 years down to distances of a few kilometres and deliver the Lander Philae onto its surface. Following the fly-by of Asteroid (21-)Lutetia in 2010, Rosetta continue…

Precise modelling of solar and thermal accelerations on Rosetta

van der Ha, Jozef C.; Kato, Takahiro

This paper presents an analytical approach for the high-fidelity model of the accelerations induced by the Solar Radiation Pressure (SRP) and the Thermal Recoil Pressure (TRP) on ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft. The relevant gravitational forces that are induced by planets, moons, and asteroids can readily be incorporated for predicting interplanetary tr…

French instruments for in-situ missions: Past, present and future

Gaudon, Philippe; Bousquet, Pierre W.; Gaboriaud, Alain +3 more

Two in-situ missions were launched at the end of 2011, soon after the 62nd IAC conference, one to Mars and the other to one of its moons, Phobos. The first - Mars Science Laboratory - has been developed by NASA and will take the largest ever rover, Curiosity, to the surface of Mars. The second mission, Phobos-Grunt under the responsibility of Rosc…