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ESA Rosetta, news, updates and discussion
djellison
post Jun 22 2005, 10:19 PM
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Bruce - would you classify ESA's press efforts as almost being obstructive in places?

Doug
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Jun 22 2005, 10:34 PM
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I don't know if "obstructive" is the word, but "idiotic and counterproductive" are definitely applicable. I just stumbled across an old clipping from the JBIS on why the ESA chose to initially display the photos from Giotto in that way that made them totally incomprehensible (and infuriated Thatcher to the point that she forbade Britain to get involved in any major way with the ESA): they were DELIBERATELY made incomprehensible to the public so that the camera's principal investigator would have absolutely total control over their initial interpretation!

I don't know how much of this is the inevitable tangle that accompany international cooperation, and how much is due to the phenomenon in which Jeffrey Bell firmly believes: that European nations still have distinctly anti-democratic and pro-aristocratic tendencies in their political leadership and so still try to resort to "Father Knows Best" approaches in dealing with their own citizens. If so, they've just received another rude awakening on that front...
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djellison
post Jun 22 2005, 10:47 PM
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I swear I saw some fantastic nebulae observations by one of the Rosetta instruments somewhere online at one point.

Buggered if I can find them now sad.gif

Is there any sort of public-group that represents the public to Nasa? I'm not aware of one, but a representative body that say "right - you need to tell us about x, y, and z, and stop wasting money on b and c" or something? (nasawatch doesnt count wink.gif )

I think something seriously needs to be done to sort ESA out. I wanted to find some HRSC images a few days ago, and it took me for ever to find that page that just has them all listed, it's ..well...crap.

The interface for HRSC data is worse than crap as well.

The Marsis thing is a case in point. We should have had a blog type thing, something, ANYTHING to keep us up to date, I figure there's about £1 of my money invested in MEX, so it's time for some pay back smile.gif

Doug
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ljk4-1
post Jan 11 2006, 07:38 PM
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ROSETTA STATUS REPORT

Report for Period 9 December 2005 - 6 January 2006

The reporting period covers four weeks of passive cruise, with
monitoring and minor maintenance activities.

On the subsystems side, the attitude guidance has been changed to +X
Earth pointing on 14 December 2005, to reduce the disturbance torques
experienced by the spacecraft and therefore the fuel consumption for
reaction wheel offloading.

http://sci.esa.int/jump.cfm?oid=38558


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"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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SigurRosFan
post Mar 1 2006, 11:20 AM
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http://fr.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0602631 - First albedo determination of 2867 Steins, target of the Rosetta mission

--- On the basis of its polarimetric slope value, we have derived an albedo of 0.45 +/-0.1, that gives an estimated diameter of 4.6 km, assuming an absolute V ma gnitude of 13.18 mag. ---


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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Mar 1 2006, 11:50 PM
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Thre's some speculation that Steins may be one of the rare E-type asteroids (enstatite chondrite) -- although it's so small that its near-IR spectrum is rather fuzzy.
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edstrick
post Mar 2 2006, 08:56 AM
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The unusually high albedo measured with both polarimietry and with brightness + thermal infrared data (we need Spitzer measurements) really does seem to put this rock in the "e" category. I don't know how sure they currently are that this corresponds to rare and "weird" Enstatite chondrites. Is it the enstatite chondrites that have nearly identical oxygen isotope systematics to Earth and Moon rocks?

ANY opportunity to get a good look as something besides variations-on-a-theme of S type asteroids is extremely welcome. The only totally limited look we have of one is NEAR's nice flyby sequence of C type Mathilde, but it's just a nice sequence of pictures, mostly.

The short 6-hour rotation rate of Steins will help get some rotational coverage, like Gaspra and Ida.
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ugordan
post Mar 2 2006, 09:35 AM
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What exactly will the closest approach distance to 2867 Steins be? I'll settle for an order-of-magnitude number if the distance is not precisely known yet.


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paxdan
post Mar 2 2006, 10:09 AM
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QUOTE (ugordan @ Mar 2 2006, 09:35 AM) *
What exactly will the closest approach distance to 2867 Steins be? I'll settle for an order-of-magnitude number if the distance is not precisely known yet.

Flyby September 5, 2008, at 1700 kilometres.
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Bob Shaw
post Mar 18 2006, 05:37 PM
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And earlier still:

February 2007 - Rosetta Mars flyby (200km altitude)

Bob Shaw


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ugordan
post Mar 18 2006, 05:46 PM
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QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Mar 18 2006, 06:37 PM) *
February 2007 - Rosetta Mars flyby (200km altitude)

It wonder if they have any plans to produce a flyby movie similar to the one MESSENGER's team produced during the Earth flyby.
It would be cool to see Mars rotate and disappear in the distance, possibly with Phobos and Deimos dancing around it.


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Bob Shaw
post Mar 18 2006, 05:49 PM
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QUOTE (ugordan @ Mar 18 2006, 05:46 PM) *
It wonder if they have any plans to produce a flyby movie similar to the one MESSENGER's team produced during the Earth flyby.
It would be cool to see Mars rotate and disappear in the distance, possibly with Phobos and Deimos dancing around it.


The ESA website simply says 'some science observations' will be carried out. Anyone know more?

Bob Shaw


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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Mar 19 2006, 01:14 AM
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They definitely intend to use the MIRO microwave spectrometer during the Mars flyby -- the first time such an instrument has ever been used there -- to make Martian atmospheric observations. (Such a gadget would have been added to MRO if they'd had the weight margin for it). I believe they also intend to use many of the other instruments, too -- although most of them would just reiterate the far more sweeping orbital observations that Mars Express has been doing.
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JTN
post Mar 22 2006, 05:16 PM
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Since I've just done the sums, I thought I'd share:
(Quite) approximate pixel size of the asteroids in OSIRIS NAC (2048 x 2048 pixels @ 0.00115 deg/pix) at closest approach:
2867 Šteins: 4.6km @ 1700km => 135 pixels
21 Lutetia: 95.8km @ 3000km => 1600 pixels
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ljk4-1
post Mar 22 2006, 08:31 PM
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Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0603585

From: S. Alan Stern [view email]

Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2006 19:04:41 GMT (508kb)

Alice: The Rosetta Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph

Authors: S.A. Stern, D.C. Slater, J. Scherrer, J. Stone, M. Versteeg, M.F. A'Hearn, J.L. Bertaux, P.D. Feldman, M.C. Festou, J.Wm. Parker, O.H.W. Siegmund

Comments: 11 pages, 7 figures

We describe the design, performance and scientific objectives of the NASA-funded ALICE instrument aboard the ESA Rosetta asteroid flyby/comet rendezvous mission. ALICE is a lightweight, low-power, and low-cost imaging spectrograph optimized for cometary far-ultraviolet (FUV) spectroscopy. It will be the first UV spectrograph to study a comet at close range. It is designed to obtain spatially-resolved spectra of Rosetta mission targets in the 700-2050 A spectral band with a spectral resolution between 8 A and 12 A for extended sources that fill its ~0.05 deg x 6.0 deg field-of-view. ALICE employs an off-axis telescope feeding a 0.15-m normal incidence Rowland circle spectrograph with a concave holographic reflection grating. The imaging microchannel plate detector utilizes dual solar-blind opaque photocathodes (KBr and CsI) and employs a 2 D delay-line readout array. The instrument is controlled by an internal microprocessor.

During the prime Rosetta mission, ALICE will characterize comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko's coma, its nucleus, and the nucleus/coma coupling; during cruise to the comet, ALICE will make observations of the mission's two asteroid flyby targets and of Mars, its moons, and of Earth's moon.

ALICE has already successfully completed the in-flight commissioning phase and is operating normally in flight. It has been characterized in flight with stellar flux calibrations, observations of the Moon during the first Earth fly-by, and observations of comet Linear T7 in 2004 and comet 9P/Tempel 1 during the 2005 Deep Impact comet-collision observing campaign

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0603585


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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