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Rosetta Lander - Landing and operations on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Finke, Felix; Ulamec, Stephan; Biele, Jens +10 more
The Rosetta Lander Philae is part of the ESA Rosetta Mission which reached comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after a 10 year cruise in August 2014. Since then, Rosetta has been studying both its nucleus and coma with instruments aboard the Orbiter. On November 12th, 2014 the Lander, Philae, was successfully delivered to the surface of the comet and …
Rosetta lander Philae - Landing performance and touchdown safety assessment
Jurado, Eric; Ulamec, Stephan; Biele, Jens +2 more
This paper describes the simulation and analysis work on Rosetta lander Philae's touchdown dynamics which was done to support its Landing Site Selection Process. The simulation part consists of a numerical multi-body simulation to describe Philae's touchdown dynamics. Suitable performance metrics in conjunction with Monte Carlo trajectory data fro…
Rosetta lander Philae: Flight Dynamics analyses for landing site selection and post-landing operations
Vincent, Jean-Baptiste; Kofman, Wlodek; Herique, Alain +20 more
On the 12th of November 2014, The Rosetta Lander Philae became the first spacecraft to softly land on a comet nucleus. Due to the double failure of the cold gas hold-down thruster and the anchoring harpoons that should have fixed Philae to the surface, it spent approximately two hours bouncing over the comet surface to finally come at rest one km …
GIADA - Grain Impact Analyzer and Dust Accumulator - Onboard Rosetta spacecraft: Extended calibrations
Fulle, M.; Rodriguez, J.; Colangeli, L. +12 more
Despite a long tradition of dust instruments flown on-board space mission, the largest number of these can be considered unique as they used different detection techniques. GIADA (Grain Impact Analyzer and Dust Accumulator), is one of the dust instruments on-board the Rosetta spacecraft and is devoted to measure the dust dynamical parameters in th…
Attitude reconstruction of ROSETTA's Lander PHILAE using two-point magnetic field observations by ROMAP and RPC-MAG
Richter, Ingo; Auster, Hans-Ulrich; Heinisch, Philip +5 more
As part of the European Space Agency's ROSETTA Mission the Lander PHILAE touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on November 12, 2014. The magnetic field has been measured onboard the orbiter and the lander. The orbiter's tri-axial fluxgate magnetometer RPC-MAG is one of five sensors of the ROSETTA Plasma Consortium. The lander is also equ…
Electric sail option for cometary rendezvous
Janhunen, Pekka; Quarta, Alessandro A.; Mengali, Giovanni
The recent successes of the European Rosetta mission have shown the possibility of a close observation with one of the most evasive celestial bodies in the Solar System, the comets, and the practical feasibility of a comet rendezvous to obtain detailed information and in situ measurements. This paper discusses a preliminary study of the transfer t…
MIDAS: Lessons learned from the first spaceborne atomic force microscope
Torkar, Klaus; Mannel, Thurid; Schmied, Roland +6 more
The Micro-Imaging Dust Analysis System (MIDAS) atomic force microscope (AFM) onboard the Rosetta orbiter was the first such instrument launched into space in 2004. Designed only a few years after the technique was invented, MIDAS is currently orbiting comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko and producing the highest resolution 3D images of cometary dust e…
Planning and implementation of the on-comet operations of the instrument SD2 onboard the lander Philae of Rosetta mission
Mottola, S.; Remetean, E.; Dolives, B. +4 more
The lander Philae of the Rosetta mission landed on the surface of the comet 67 P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on November 12, 2014. Among the specific subsystems and instruments carried on Philae, the sampling, drilling and distribution (SD2) subsystem had the role of providing in-situ operations devoted to soil drilling, sample collection, and their dis…
The SESAME/CASSE instrument listening to the MUPUS PEN insertion phase on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Schmidt, W.; Knollenberg, J.; Knapmeyer, M. +7 more
After the final landing of Philae at the Abydos site on comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the MUPUS (Multipurpose Sensors for Surface and Sub-Surface Science) device started hammering itself into the cometary ground on 14th November 2014, and continued hammering for more than 3 h. During this period, the CASSE (Comet Acoustic Surface Sounding Expe…
Rosetta science operations in support of the Philae mission
Altobelli, Nicolas; Almeida, Miguel; Martin, Patrick +16 more
The international Rosetta mission was launched on 2nd March 2004 and after its ten year journey, arrived at its target destination of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, during 2014. Following the January 2014 exit from a two and half year hibernation period, Rosetta approached and arrived at the comet in August 2014. In November 2014, the Philae lan…