Rosetta Blog

Rosetta Blog http://webservices.esa.int/blog/blog/5 Coverage of the Rosetta mission as she makes a series of complex gravity assist manoeuvres around Earth (Mar 2005, Nov 2007, Nov 2009) and Mars (Feb 2007), plus the exciting encounters with Asteroids Steins (Sep 2008) and Lutetia (Jul 2010). News and updates from the Rosetta Dedicated Control Room at ESOC, ESA's European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany. administrator 2012-02-10T10:59:22Z ScienceCasts: Mission to Land on a Comet http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/5/1381 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!  <iframe frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FoePrO4-fGQ?rel=0" width="640"></iframe> General Science Operations Hibernation 2012-02-03T20:32:06Z danielscuka How does Lutetia compare to the other asteroids and comets visited by spacecraft? http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/5/1249 <a href="http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002585/" target="_blank"><img src="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/thumb.png" align="left" /></a>The <a href="http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002585/" target="_blank">Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla</a> 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 <a href="http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002585/" target="_blank">full post and the full-size image here</a>. -- Daniel           General Science Optical observation 2010-07-16T10:29:27Z danielscuka Lutetia closest approach images http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/5/1247 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.   <a id="res_18761" href="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/2_Lutetia_and_Saturn.png"><img src="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/previews-med/2_Lutetia_and_Saturn.gif" border="0" alt="At a distance of 36000km the OSIRIS Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) took this image catching the planet Saturn in the background. (C) ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA" /></a>   Farewell Lutetia! <a id="res_18766" href="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/7_crescent.jpg"><img src="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/previews-med/7_crescent.gif" border="0" alt="Farewell Lutetia. (C) ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA" /></a>   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.  <a id="res_18760" href="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/1_Lutetia_frames.jpg"><img src="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/previews-med/1_Lutetia_frames.gif" border="0" alt="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 (C) ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA" /></a>   Final sequence of images before closest approach (CA-8, CA-4:40, CA-2, CA-1:50) <a id="res_18762" href="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/3_final_sequence.jpg"><img src="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/previews-med/3_final_sequence.gif" border="0" alt="Final sequence of images before closest approach (CA-8, CA-4:40, CA-2, CA-1:50). (C) ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA" /></a>   Zoom into detail with grooves and craters. <a id="res_18765" href="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/6_Lutetia_OSIRIS_LAM_2.jpg"><img src="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/previews-med/6_Lutetia_OSIRIS_LAM_2.gif" border="0" alt="Zoom into detail with grooves and craters. (C) ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA" /></a>  Zoom in on a possible landslide and boulders at the highest resolution.  <a id="res_18770" href="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/5_zoom.jpg"><img src="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/previews-med/5_zoom.gif" border="0" alt="Zoom in on a possible landslide and boulders at the highest resolution. (C) ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA" /></a>   General Science 2010-07-10T23:03:30Z danielscuka First pre-flyby images now available! http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/5/1246 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  <a id="res_18756" href="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/Lutetia_approach.gif"><img src="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/previews-med/Lutetia_approach.gif" border="0" /></a>  <a id="res_18757" href="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/Lutetia_frames.jpg"><img src="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/previews-med/Lutetia_frames.gif" border="0" /></a>  <a id="res_18758" href="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/NAC_80kkm_F82.jpg"><img src="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/previews-med/NAC_80kkm_F82.gif" border="0" /></a>  <a id="res_18759" href="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/NAC_F82_80k_km.jpg"><img src="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/previews-med/NAC_F82_80k_km.gif" border="0" /></a>     General Science Operations Optical observation 2010-07-10T18:02:32Z danielscuka Live webcast starting 18:00 CEST http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/5/1244 <div align="center"> <iframe frameborder="0" height="485" scrolling="no" src="http://download.esa.int/esoc/blog_stream.html" width="520"></iframe> </div> General Science Operations 2010-07-10T17:51:41Z danielscuka The discovery of Lutetia http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/5/1245 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   General Science 2010-07-10T17:27:01Z stuartclark Waiting for a close-up look at Lutetia http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/5/1241 <a id="res_18771" href="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/ar_canyon.jpg"><img src="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/previews/ar_canyon.gif" border="0" alt="Andy Rivkin" align="left" /></a>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. <blockquote> We really don't know what to expect from Lutetia, which is exciting.. </blockquote> -- <a href="http://smass.mit.edu/~andy/" target="_blank">Andy Rivkin</a> He agreed to answer some questions via mail - access details under 'Full story' -- Stuart   Q. What drew your attention to Lutetia in 1996? Andy: I was observing asteroids in a part of the infrared spectrum that is sensitive to water, whether as ice or chemically bound into 'hydrated minerals'.  These hydrated minerals are seen in some primitive meteorites, where they formed very early in solar system history as radioactive heat melted ice and the resulting water reacted with dry rock. We see evidence for hydrated minerals, particularly larger and darker ones mostly found in the middle and outer asteroid belt. Hydrated minerals can also form on Earth via similar reactions between water and dry rock. Even though water is chemically part of these minerals, you wouldn't think they were 'wet' if you looked at or handled them. I looked at a number of M-class asteroids, and found that a surprisingly large number of them, roughly a third, showed evidence of hydrated minerals. This was surprising because M asteroids have been associated with iron meteorites, and are not at all expected to have any hydrated minerals. Lutetia is one of the larger M-asteroids, and one of the ones we found to display evidence of hydrated minerals. Lutetia is also unusual because M asteroids tend to be reddish in colour, while Lutetia is much greyer. Also, it reflects very little radar compared to typical M-asteroids. Finally, two different techniques for determining Lutetia's brightness have found quite different results and it's not clear why. Adding all these unusual factors together make Lutetia look like a member of a different asteroid group, the C-class asteroids. Instead of iron meteorites, these are associated with very primitive meteorites, which contain organic material. Q. What are you hoping for from the flyby? Andy: Taking it all into account, we really don't know what to expect from Lutetia, which is exciting. It is pretty clearly not like any asteroid we have yet visited. I selfishly hope that Rosetta will confirm hydrated minerals on Lutetia, more than 15 years after my thesis observations. But more generally, I'm looking forward to Rosetta's close-up look and to people getting the chance to make sense of all of the unusual measurements.     General Science 2010-07-10T15:22:40Z danielscuka Less than 330,000 km! http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/5/1238 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 Science Operations Optical observation 2010-07-10T12:22:35Z danielscuka OSIRIS imaging team hard at work http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/5/1237 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   General Science Optical observation 2010-07-10T11:10:10Z danielscuka Remembering Grigg-Skjellerup http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/5/1234 <a id="res_18752" href="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/9700347.jpg"> <div style="text-align: center"> <img src="http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/5/previews-med/9700347.gif" border="0" /> </div> </a> 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 <a href="http://www.esa.int/esaSC/120392_index_0_m.html" target="_blank">Giotto mission</a>, 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. <a href="http://www.esa.int/esa-mmg/mmg.pl?b=b&mission=Giotto&single=y&start=1&size=b" target="_blank">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.</a> 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 General Science Operations 2010-07-10T08:55:52Z danielscuka