ESA Rosetta, news, updates and discussion Options

[paxdan]

Well Rosetta isn't going to get to 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (Chury) till 2014, but it's not to early to set up a thread. There are a bunch of earth fly-bys, a Mars encounter at 200km in 2007 and a few asteriod passes. Not to mention the mission to land on the comet itself.

Only another nine and a half years to go.

[edstrick]

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.

[ugordan]

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.

[paxdan]

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.

[Bob Shaw]

And earlier still:

February 2007 - Rosetta Mars flyby (200km altitude)

Bob Shaw

[GravityWaves]

And earlier still:

February 2007 - Rosetta Mars flyby (200km altitude)

Bob Shaw

I've heard nothing on this Mars flyby where does ESA release its press info ?

[Rakhir]

I've heard nothing on this Mars flyby where does ESA release its press info ?

Rosetta journey : http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Rosetta/ESA38F7708D_0.html
Rosetta factsheet : http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMJ09374OD_0_spk.html
Geometry of the flyby : http://www.space.irfu.se/rosetta/sci/mars/

[ljk4-1]

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0603720

From: Jessica Agarwal [view email]

Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 13:00:59 GMT (713kb)

Imaging the Dust Trail and Neckline of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Authors: J. Agarwal (1), H. Boehnhardt (2), E. Gruen (1 and 3) ((1) MPI-K Heidelberg, (2) MPS Katlenburg-Lindau, (3) HIGP Honolulu)

Comments: 4 pages, 3 figures, to be published in the proceedings book of the conference "Dust in Planetary Systems 2005"

We report on the results of nearly 10 hours of integration of the dust trail and neckline of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P henceforth) using the Wide Field Imager at the ESO/MPG 2.2m telescope in La Silla. The data was obtained in April 2004 when the comet was at a heliocentric distance of 4.7 AU outbound. 67P is the target of the Rosetta spacecraft of the European Space Agency. Studying the trail and neckline can contribute to the quantification of mm-sized dust grains released by the comet. We describe the data reduction and derive lower limits for the surface brightness. In the processed image, the angular separation of trail and neckline is resolved. We do not detect a coma of small, recently emitted grains.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0603720