We're wrapping up here in the newsroom.

We'll be publishing updates of science results from the fly-by as they're available on the ESA Rosetta site.

The Rosetta blog will be back online again in November 2009, for the third Earth swing-by. In the meantime, ESA will host blogs for other exciting events. Check the ESA portal for regular news and updates.

Thanks a lot for all your great enthusiasm over the last few days!

--Amruta

Now available in the ESA web site:

http://www.esa.int
http://www.esa.int/rosetta
http://www.esa.int/science

 

An animation of the closest approach of Rosetta to asteroid Steins, taken with the OSIRIS imaging system’s Wide Angle Camera. The image sequence starts 3 minutes before closest approach, from a distance of about 2000 km and ends 4 minutes after closest approach. At the start of the animation, the sun illuminated the asteroid from behind the spacecraft and no shadows are visible on the its surface. Later, the sunlight is incident from the left, and craters and more surface features become visible.

ESA ©2008 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

 

A full web update with Rosetta's Steins fly-by results is scheduled for 13:00 CEST on the ESA site. -- Daniel

Watch it live here. --Amruta

Good morning!

The first image data is in now and the team is analysing it as I type. So far it looks very promising, and we expect to publish some amazing images at 13:00 hrs.

The download of the OSIRIS imaging system data started at 02:00 CEST, and is still ongoing.

The VIRTIS (infrared spectrometer) data download began an hour ago, and will be completed in about two hours. We’ve heard that the team in Italy at INAF, Rome, is on stand-by, and are eager to get their hands on the data.

We’ve also just been told that the housekeeping data for VIRTIS looks nominal.

--Amruta