Rosetta Blog | Hibernation

General , Science , Operations , Hibernation 03 February, 2012 20:32

ScienceCasts: Mission to Land on a Comet

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!

General , Operations , Fun stuff , Hibernation , coolcomet 11 June, 2011 21:40

Cool comet submissions: Honourable mentions & Made Us Chuckle

This view of Comet Halley's nucleus was obtained by the Halley Multicolour Camera (HMC) on board the Giotto spacecraft, as it passed within 600 km of the comet nucleus on 13 March 1986. Credit: ESA/MPI

{{Final winners and Top 5 to be posted shortly}}

A listing of all #coolcomet Twitter campaign entries ranked by the judges in the 'Honourable mention' and 'Made us chuckle' categories (note 'very rough' EN translation for any entries not in English).

Access details on the campaign via: Take Part in ESA's Cool Comet Campaign

Bravo and well done to all those listed below!!!

@kristin_365
@Jrmluque
@M__Lopez
@BuddyWolly
@magisstra
@Johnny_Proxy
@ELDNAstronomy
@AngusMcLulz
@diolor
@EPenguin
@cifvts
@LiiveToWiin

Click on Full story to read Tweets...

Full story »

General , Operations , Hibernation 08 June, 2011 14:23

Command to be sent shortly

The Rosetta flight control team here at ESOC now plan to issue the hibernation command at 14:47 CEST; confirmation of successful entry would then come approximately 75 minutes later.

Follow @esaoperations on Twitter for all updates.

General , Operations , Hibernation 08 June, 2011 10:33

Confirmed: Rosetta now slowly spinning

The automated start of Rosetta's spin-up manoeuvre took place as scheduled this morning at 10:00 CEST. In this image, ESA's Paolo Ferri and Gerhard Schwehm stand at right while Roberto Porta and Sylvain Lodiot watch the plot coming in from NASA's DSN station at Canberra, Australia. Team are all rather pleased with progress so far! -- Daniel

General , Operations , Fun stuff , Hibernation 08 June, 2011 09:40

Rosetta's lullaby song heard on Earth

A nice little update this morning! Our friend and past ESA blog contributor Bertrand Pinel, from France, sent in this screenshot showing the track of the Rosetta radio signal carrier shortly after the GO/NO-GO decision last night and start of the spacecraft's automated hibernation entry sequence (23:47CEST). Bertrand points out that the start of Rosetta's spin up and the switch off today won't be 'visible' to hsi radio equipment because the probe won't be over Europe when it happens (starting in about 30 minutes).

Bertrand is a keen amateur radio astronomer and always amazes us with what he can achieve with home-made equipment! He's contributed to the Mars Express blog in the past (see pictures of Bertrand and some of his equipment here). Merci, Bertrand...and thanks to ESA's Thomas Ormston on the Mars Express team for passing on the details. -- Daniel

General , Operations , Hibernation 08 June, 2011 09:07

Monitoring progress: Rosetta team in control room

Quick update from the Rosetta dedicated Control Room this AM: Contact via NASA's 70m deep space station at Canberra has been established - you can see signals arriving from Rosetta on screen in the third photo below. Later today, NASA Goldstone and ESA New Norcia will also come on line, so there is plenty of back up available.

Spacecraft Operations Manager Andrea Accomazzo says that the execution of the on-board sequence to prepare the craft for hibernation is on track! Next big milestone comes just after 10:00 CEST today - start of the spin-up manoeuvre. -- Daniel

Spacecraft Operations Manager Andrea Accomazzo (standing) with Rosetta engineers Roberto Porta (L) and Sylvain Lodiot (at console) at ESOC, Darmstadt, monitor signals from Rosetta via NASA's Canberra deep space station.

Clock counts down time to next major on-board event: start of spin-up manoeuvre, due at about 10:00 CEST.

Watching signals from Rosetta as the spacecraft conducts an automated switch-over into final pre-hibernation mode.

General , Operations , Hibernation 08 June, 2011 00:58

Rosetta is GO for hibernation entry

An update just in tonight from Spacecraft Operations Manager Andrea Accomazzo in the Rosetta Dedicated Control Room at ESOC.

The 'GO' telecommand, which starts the ball rolling on board Rosetta for final automated sequence for hibernation entry, was sent yesterday evening at 21:47 UTC (23:47 CEST). The team at ESOC saw it execute on board the spacecraft about one hour later, at 00:47 CEST, which confirms satellite is on track for hibernation later today.

Basically, the entire sequence to command entering into hibernation is loaded on board and will start automatically, stopping only to wait for the final (manual) command to complete shut-down, due after 13:00 CEST.

Next big event? The spin up manoeuvre at 10:00 CEST today. -- Daniel

General , Operations , Hibernation 07 June, 2011 23:58

DSS 43 - Canberra: Signalling Rosetta

View of Canberra 70m (230 ft.) antenna with flags from the three Deep Space Network sites. The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, located outside Canberra, Australia, is one of the three complexes which comprise NASA's Deep Space Network. The other complexes are located in Goldstone, California, and Madrid, Spain. Credit: NASA

DSS 43 is scheduled to contact Rosetta starting at 07:20 CEST on Wednesday, 8 June.

General , Operations , Hibernation 07 June, 2011 15:12

Rosetta hibernation timeline

One-way signal time is now 1824 seconds. All times subject to change. Mission operations managed from ESA/ESOC, Darmstadt. Most crucial events highlighted in blue. -- Daniel

Notes: