Is this cool, or what!

Europe's Rosetta spacecraft is en route to intercept a comet-- and to make history. In 2014, Rosetta will enter orbit around 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and land a probe on it for a front row seat as the comet heads toward the sun. Many thanks to our NASA colleauges for a cool video! 

The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla has posted an excellent, updated "Comets and Asteroids" poster showing, to scale, all such bodies visited by spacecraft so far.

The latest addition is, of course, 21 Lutetia!

She's done an excellent job of correlating images sizes and scales. Access her full post and the full-size image here. -- Daniel

 

 

 

 

 

All images credit/copyright:

(C) ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA 

 

At a distance of 36 000 km, the OSIRIS Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) took this image catching the planet Saturn in the background.  

 

Farewell Lutetia!

 

Approach images of Asteroid Lutetia. The first image was taken at 06:18 (about 9.5 hours before closest approach, 510000 kms from the asteroid), the last one at 14:15 (about 1.5 hours before closest approach, 81000 km from the asteroid.). The resolution changes from 9.6 km/px to 1.5 km/px.

 

 

Final sequence of images before closest approach (CA-8, CA-4:40, CA-2, CA-1:50)

 

Zoom into detail with grooves and craters.

 Zoom in on a possible landslide and boulders at the highest resolution.

 

 

First pre-flyby images now available! Largest view of Lutetia shows asteroid at a distance of 80,000 km. Better yet to come!!

All images: CREDIT: (C) ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA 

 

 

 

 

 

Lutetia was discovered in 1852 from the Paris balcony of French painter turned astronomer Hermann Goldschmidt. To honour his home city, he called it 'Lutetia', after the Roman name for Paris. It was an early vindication of Goldschmidt's career change.

He became interested in astronomy after attending a talk by the great French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier, of the Paris Observatory. The previous year, Le Verrier had correctly predicted the position of the then unknown planet Neptune, sparking its discovery. The mathematical success made him famous. His Paris lectures were timed to coincide with an easily visible lunar eclipse in 1847. He clearly inspired Goldschmidt.

Captivated by the possibilities for discovery, the painter bought a telescope, appropriately enough with the proceeds from the sale of two portraits of Galileo. He set it up on his sixth floor apartment's balcony and began to sweep the skies.

Lutetia was his first discovery, made on the evening of 15 November 1852, but not his last. During the next nine years, he discovered 13 more asteroids making him the most successful asteroid hunter of his generation.

He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1861, and has a crater on the Moon named after him. - Stuart

 

I've been in contact with astronomer Andy Rivkin, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, in Maryland, USA. He was in the news recently as the leader of one of two teams that found ice and organic material on the asteroid Themis. That discovery was made with the same telescope Andy had used to study Lutetia almost 15 years earlier. So this flyby has a special meaning.

We really don't know what to expect from Lutetia, which is exciting..

-- Andy Rivkin

He agreed to answer some questions via mail - access details under 'Full story' -- Stuart

 

 Full story »

Richard Moissl on the OSIRIS team just wrote: "We are closing in at a steady pace (less than 330,000km distance to the asteroid now) and the narrow angle camera is starting to resolve surface structures." -- Daniel

This just in from Richard Moissl, working on the OSIRIS team at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research here in Germany. Richard writes: "Since 6:18 UTC (08:18 CEST), Osiris has been imaging the approach with both cameras, the narrow angle camera (NAC) and the wide angle camera (WAC), collecting images with 10-minute intervals."

The OSIRIS team will keep us updated (and we'll pass along info right here in the blog) - and we are looking forward to seeing the results of their work later today! A quick reminder: one of the unavoidable limitations to publishing images will be download slots. -- Daniel

 

Welcome to this exciting day for Rosetta! Later today, the spacecraft will fly by the mysterious asteroid Lutetia. For those scientists who worked on ESA’s Giotto mission, there is a sense of déjà vu. Eighteen years ago to the very day, Giotto flew past the comet Grigg-Skjellerup.

It was a hot summer night in ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany, in 1992 when Giotto slipped past comet Grigg-Skjellerup at a distance of just 200 km.  A forerunner of ESA’s Rosetta mission, Giotto had performed a spectacular flyby of Halley’s comet in 1986. It then went on to an extended mission because, although damaged by the Halley encounter, which saw dust smashing into the spacecraft at speeds of almost 70 km/s, it still had 60 kg of fuel left on board.

Click to watch video: 20 Years after Giotto
Twenty years ago, in 1986, Comet Halley had its latest
rendezvous with the Sun and spectators here on Earth.
Only months before, ESA had launched its first deep-space
mission - Giotto. Its destination, Comet Halley.

The comet chosen was Grigg-Skjellerup and the encounter distance was much closer, too. This was possible by although Giotto tore past Halley ‘head-on’, obtaining its last image at a distance of 6500km, it would only coast through Grigg-Skjellerup’s path at a more oblique angle. Also, the second comet was much less active at producing dust than Halley.

During the pass, Giotto's Energetic Particle Detector (EPONA) captured data that suggested Grigg-Skjellerup had broken in two but the spacecraft captured no images to look for the fragment: the camera had been ‘sandblasted’ to destruction during the Halley flyby. The collision of a single dust particle in 1986 had set Giotto spinning, exposing the instruments to the torrent of comet dust. As a result, the camera was damaged beyond resuscitation. Today, Rosetta will return images. Its target is an asteroid, not a comet, and so it does not make so much dust. The cameras are all working and the first pictures are expected to be released at 23:00 CEST tonight. Stay tuned! -- Stuart Clark

We've just updated yesterday's blog post, ESA's Herschel and Rosetta team up for joint observations, with a pair of excellent animations showing what each of Rosetta and Herschel may see from their respective vantage points during the same timeframe leading up to, at and after closest approach.

The animations show how scientists aim to compare and correlate data gathered from two ESA missions observing at the same time from two very separate vantage points. 

Click here to access the full post and animations (or click on the graphic at left) - and thanks to Laurence, Thomas and the MACH-8 group. -- Daniel

 

 

Note: ESA science editor - and Rosetta blog contributor - Stuart Clark sent in a report earlier this morning providing an excellent description of the science activities planned for Lutetia flyby; a number of instruments are already active, including the OSIRIS imaging system (which was used for the past several weeks for optical navigation). We've combined Stuart's excellent write-up with a listing of the instruments, their operation dates and their planned observations/investigation targets. This list was compiled by ESA's Michael Küppers, who works at the Rosetta Science Operations Centre at ESAC, Spain. -- Daniel

Lutetia is a mystery. It returns confusing signals to ground-based telescopes, effectively hiding its composition. At various times, it has displayed characteristics of both 'C-type' carbonaceous asteroids and 'M-type' metallic asteroids. If it is C-type, it is a primitive remnant from the era of planetary formation. If it is M-type, it is a fragment of a once much larger asteroid that has been shattered by a collision.

Rosetta will use its extensive complement of instruments to investigate the mystery, looking for a definitive answer to Lutetia’s composition and for a complete characterisation of this remarkable little world. 

Full text after the jump!

 Full story »

ESA's Kirstin Wirth also sent in a nice photo today showing the Rosetta science team, all based at the Rosetta Science Operations Centre (RSOC), at ESAC, Spain. She wrote:

The RSOC (at the European Space Astronomy Centre, ESAC, near Madrid) completed delivery of the fly-by science operations plans to the mission operations team at ESOC in June. These files mainly comprise a detailed schedule of flyby experiment observations, the spacecraft pointing plan and the timeline of telecommand sequences to be uplinked to the instruments. Currently, the team at the RSOC are following up the implementation of the science plan and are supporting the colleagues at ESOC in making small, last-minute updates. A part of the team will be co-located at ESOC, in Darmstadt, on 10 July. In addition, we are also looking ahead in time, as we are now collecting requirements from the individual instrument teams to prepare the instruments for entry into deep space hibernation.

   

L-R: Claire Vallat, Juan Jose Garcia Beteta, Michael Küppers (behind Rosetta), Kristin Wirth (in front of Rosetta), Viney Dhiri

 

 

 

This was just sent in by ESA's Kristin Wirth, Rosetta Science Operations Manager at ESAC in Spain, near Madrid. ESAC is home to the Rosetta Science Operations Centre (RSOC), from where all scientific activities for the instruments are planned, managed and controlled. (The instruments on the Philae lander are operated by our colleagues at the German Aerospace Center/DLR, near Cologne, Germany). Thanks Kristin!

Kristin writes:

Here is a short report from the RSOC for the Rosetta blog. Update on experiment operations as of today:

• OSIRIS and NAVCAM took the regular navigation images last night. The 19th and final navigation slot will take place tonight.
• OSIRIS recorded a light curve of the unresolved asteroid yesterday. This observation was followed by a calibration using the star 16 Cyg.
• ALICE will perform the first part of its exosphere search today (14:30 - 22:45 UTC). The instrument will look for emission lines in the UV from a possible gas environment of Lutetia.
• The mass spectrometer ROSINA on the orbiter continues to investigate the outgassing of the asteroid.
• The mass spectrometer PTOLEMY on the lander conducted a background measurement yesterday.
• RPC powered on yesterday and started to study possible magnetic fields and plasma effects.

We'll post a more detailed listing of which instruments are actively involved in Lutetia flyby later today. -- Daniel

This just in via email from Armelle Hubault, Rosetta Spacecraft Operations Engineer here at ESOC:

• ALICE is now off after having completed its calibration activities. The instrument will switch on again tomorrow to start acquiring science data.
• COSIMA is now off with dust collecting targets exposed.
• OSIRIS started measurements to produce a light-curve of the asteroid later today.
• ROSINA was switched on at 04:00z (06:00 CEST) this morning and will stay on until after the flyby to measure the gas environment around Lutetia.
• As you know, the Lander will go on today at 10:45z (12:45 CEST).
• RPC will also switch on today at 15:40z (17:40 CEST) and stay on until 13 July. RPC will measure the magnetosphere and the plasma environment of Lutetia.
• SREM is always on on Rosetta, monitoring the radiation environment around the spacecraft.