IM4,

Thanks for the doc.

Lutetia asteroid in Rosetta’s spotlight

An animated sequence of Lutetia imaging and an image of Mars and the Milky Way taken by OSIRIS.

I can't get RealPlayer or Windows Media Player to play the high-res version of the animation. Is anyone else having more success?

I wish ESA would post these things in a format that I could more easily repost. I know that animated GIF isn't the world's best animation format but it's something that I can pull individual frames out of and resize for posting...

That Mars and Milky Way image is really gorgeous, though!

--Emily

I can't get it to work, either, Emily; must be the site itself.

Agree with you, though: beautiful pics! Almost tempted to infer that the dark spot on Mars is Syrtis Major, but in all probability it's just an artifact.

Emily,

you have to download the DivX viewer in order to see it.

EDITED: ...And the asteroid's details are quite remarkable...

One of the things I'm expecting with greater curiosity is the use of instruments from the Philae lander on Mars observations, it could give us some hints on what it could retrieve from the surface of the comet...

Ongoing Preparations for Mars Swing-by
29 Jan 2007 09:29
Report for Period 13 January to 26 January 2007

Rosetta will be soon exactly 10,000,000 miles away from Mars at 2007-Feb-04 05:26:33 UTC.

The spacecraft is currently going almost directly toward Mars with a speed of about 20560 mph.

So, what is a more significant figure: 10,000,000 miles or 10,000,000 km?

What's a mile?

(well - it's a European spacecraft after all )


Doug

A mile is in the eye of the beholder

Statute, nautical, imperial... yadayadayada...

I'm all for the metric system. If I could convince the USAF Reserve to let me run 2 km instead of 2 miles for my biannual physical fitness test, life would be better...

The great thing about using a variety of units: miles, km, sols, days, etc.
is there are so many more milestones to celebrate. The more the merrier!

Gee, Doug. I thought you British were just as good as us Americans for knowing how far a mile is on the road! (Even though you put the signs on the “wrong” side of the road.) You holding out on us?

If the UK would switch to KM, I'd be very happy.

Doug

I'll admit, I am a stick in the mud when it comes to metric...for space exploration, great, but as for every day life, give me miles, feet, pounds, and inches. Well, off to watch the game...

Ted, why to complicate your life using Km in space and Miles on Earth?
I have impression that the only way to convince all to use the same unit system is... to create a new one!
I know, is a madness... anyway, what do you think of the space covered by light in a billionth of sec? (hey, you should like it, is pretty close to a foot!). Then use all power of 10 units (metric is better from this standpoint, no doubt).
Even better, we could divide the day in 10^5 "seconds" and we will have such a lenght unit equal to 259mm or about 10 inch)... ok, stop the metric madness!

Fine. Just don't interfere with the pint.

Wouldn't you rather have a litre

Doug

Even that's not strictly SI. I'll have a cubic metre and a pork pie please.

I'm reminded of a rather foul song I co-wrote for a laugh whilst a teenager...I'll share it with you next time I see you - not suitable for forum consumption

John the Grocers life fell through the ground,
When he got nicked for selling apples by the pound.....

Doug

We have some things in liters. Mainly softdrinks.

So you're not even consistent?

Basically, in the 1970s, there was an abortive attempt to make America metric, but a few things did change and have stayed. My understanding is that something similar happened in the UK, but got a lot farther. I know the whole Celsius thing has been a point of confusion when I am on that side of the puddle (which collectively over the course of my life would total up to about a year), because, well, 40 degrees instinctively sounds cold to me, even though I know that it isn't on the Celsius scale.

As an American, I never got to see these "in person," but I saw one on a news story here. You see, when Britain went over to a decimal money system, they ran a series of public service announcements urging people to use the new decimal money.

The PSAs had a little jingle that I still recall, perhaps because of the actual way they stated some things. Specifically, while the decimal money was called decimal, the old-style money-counting system was referred to by the abbreviations for pound, shilling and pence, which for some odd (and I'm sure quite English) reason was abbreviated to "LSD." So you got:

"Decimal shops
Give decimal change,
LSD shops give...
LSD change!"

Hearing that for the first time, I figured there was no problem -- you'd have no issue getting rid of LSD change. Just invite a lot of people from San Francisco...

-the other Doug

I can't understand why people would want to go metric, after all what's wrong with the old (Imperial?) system:

12 lines to an inch, 12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, 220 yards to a furlong, 8 furlongs to a mile and 3 miles to a league.

16 drams to an ounce, 16 ounces to a pound, 14 pounds to a stone, 2 stones to a quarter, 4 quarters to a hundredweight and 20 hundredweight to a long ton.


Now that is what I call creative units, and if it leads to an occasional case of unintentional lithobraking, so what.

Don't forget troy ounces. That's what makes the joke about "which weighs more, a pound of gold or a pound of feathers" work. (Answer: a pound of feathers weighs more, because a pound (avoirdupois) of feathers is 453 grams but a pound (troy) of gold is only 373 grams.)

--Greg

The part that I find really odd is that "Imperial" measures are fundamentally defined by calling on metric SI base units e.g. the international avoirdupois pound is defined officially as being equal to exactly 453.59237 SI grams. This opens up a whole other argument about pounds being units of force and not mass but I really don't think we should go there again.

In any case surely shouldn't the Pound be defined as equal to the weight of one of George Washington's boots or something?

Well, one of my latest classes is a crash physics review rolled into new stuff for space sensors, and all I can say is thank God for the metric system. I have enough trouble figuring out where to put decimal points without worrying about duodecimal/hex unit conversions to boot!!!

Actually, the yard used to be the distance between a liege lord's nose and the tip of his finger on an outstretched arm. No matter that a particular lord's lands had a different length for the yard than anyone else -- it placed his stamp on everything built during his reign.

-the other Doug

Precious...Just precious...

"For detailed information regarding Rosetta's Mars Swing-by, please consult the Trajectory Status Presentation given by Trevor Morley from the ESOC Flight Dynamics Team for the Mars Swing-by Preparation Readiness Meeting that took place on the February the 2nd and which was kindly made accessible to spacEurope by Dr. Gerhard Schwehm."

Isn't it ironic that all this "discution" about metric vs imperial occurs in the Rosetta's topic ?
M.Champollion, where are you?

I think it's because the switch to the metric system is almost the latest news we have from over there.

--Greg ;-)

Rosetta correctly lined up for critical Mars swingby
ESA
15 February 2007

As an aside, several Rosetta instruments and investigations-related papers have been posted over the past few weeks in the "Online First" section of the journal Space Science Reviews. These papers will be assigned to a specific issue(s) at a later date.

Looks like a great craft but what makes the Rossetta lander so different to the stunt the Japanese tried to pull with Itokawa

Minerva wasn't much of a scientist - camera, temp data and the ability to 'bounce' itself around a little.

Philae - however...

Rosetta Lander Scientific Instruments

Investigation of comet materials COSAC MPAe D chemical analysis with mass spectrometer (MS) and gas chromatograph (GC); pressure sensor Ptolemy Open University UK isotope analysis (ion trap, GC) APX MPCh D element analysis ( Alpha Xray Spectrometer) Cameras for viewing of the comet core ÇIVA IAS F panorama, stereo and microscope cameras, imaging infrared spectrometer ROLIS DLR D landing and down looking camera Investigation of comet core structure SESAME DLR D seismic measurements, dust monitoring, permittivity probing CONSERT CEPHAG/LPG F microwave tomography MUPUS Univ. Münster D penetrator with thermal sensors Plasma and magnetic environment ROMAP Univ. Braunschweig D magnetic field and plasma monitoring Sample Retrieval SD2 Politecnico di Milano I drilling and sample distribution

"Philae - however..."

The entire Rosetta mission is entirely comparable to Galileo/Jupiter Probe, and Cassini/Huygens and in older times, Viking Orbiters and Landers in ambitiousness and in the scientific scope and variety of instruments. This is one big, impressive mission.

Indeed. I think of it as CRAF+. Kudos to ESA for stepping up with an enhanced mission after NASA had its budget slashed and had to renege on some of its international commitments.

Correct. This is a flagship. It will give us much more return than Deep Impact, Contour and Stardust combined.

Not to discount the samples from Stardust or the possibility to study 3 different comets with Contour. But long term study is the key. To see the change, not to take snapshots. Using a suite of instruments. You can repeat observations to answer new questions. This is something Contour or Deep Impact could not do. Deep Impact in particular has been a big disappointment. For me it looked more like an engineering demonstration than a science mission. Stardust is a little bit different: There you have the material and can study it again and again. But these very short flybys should be something of the past (This is even true for New Horizons, but hey, there is no way to orbit Pluto, so you must flyby).

If I look at Discovery missions so far, many did carry only very limited instruments: MPF, Stardust, Contour, Deep Impact. On the other hand, orbiters were much more productive: NEAR, Lunar Prospector, hopefully Messenger and Dawn (although Dawns instruments are very limited too). Genesis is a little bit different, but Kepler has a very limited scope too.

I go as far and say: One flagship like Cassini (3 billion $) gives you much more return than 8 Discovery missions (400 million $ each). Discovery missions need a very large amount of their budget just to built the spacecraft bus and launch it. The science instruments are only tiny fraction. This relationship get better the bigger the mission.

Analyst

But of course, one LV failure with 8 discovery missions is a little less drastic than a single LV failure on a flagship mission. There are benefits to spreading things out a little.

Doug

I've been thinking about this issue in relation to possible future outer solar system missions, possibly with major inter-agency collaborations. One possibility would be to launch component modules separately and assemble them in Earth orbit. You could have a single interplanetary propulsion unit plus entirely independent modules for (for example) planet orbiter, moon orbiter, balloon probes module, lander - the failure of any one of which would not jeopardise the entire mission. Of course it would be desirable to have a back-up interplanetary propulsion unit on the ground that the other bits could just wait in orbit for if necessary.

Also, multiple missions can be sent to multiple targets.

All this considered, I stand by my opinion. Maybe the risks are higher (all eggs in one basket), but the benefits are higher too. For me, subjective, the benefits of flagship missions outweight the risks of loosing one.

Analyst

To me, it depends. If funding levels are too low, and thus flagships get to rare and then one fails, the powers that be might get too used to not having planetary missions. Also, smaller missions are often needed to pathfind, in some cases to prove technology, and in others to do some basic reconnaissance to select instruments for a flagship.

In addition, it depends on the target. For the moon, or even Mars, a series of little missions works OK, at least for orbiters. But when it comes to the outer solar system, the cost of getting there makes small missions harder to justify, post Pioneer.

I just thought I'd point out something I mentioned in the blog yesterday: The Society is sending your very own Doug Ellison to Darmstadt, Germany to cover the Mars flyby for the blog, since I can't travel for business right now. Be nice and give him some (virtual) company as he stares blearily at his laptop screen beginning around 2 am CET on Sunday...

--Emily

I noticed that in your blog and was duly delighted. He will have plenty of company!

Is a long extended mission a possibility for Rosetta?

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db_shm?sst...p;search=Search

seems to indicate that the target comet will make a distant Jupiter pass around 2017/2018

OSIRIS update.

Thanks ustrax... look at the last paragraph... "No timetable for publication" of the acquired data.

... sigh ...

Did he say anything about the trajectory for the upcoming earth flyby (or does anybody know?) I have long wished another spacecraft would make a Galileo-like flyby with its cameras on.