Rosetta space probe timeline

Rosetta is a space probe aiming to rendezvous with the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This page records a detailed timeline of this mission.

Timeline

2004

February

*February 16 — "Rosetta" was placed on top of an Ariane 5 rocket at the Guiana Space Centre, Kourou. This put the mission on track for a timely launch.

*February 26 — Scheduled launch was stopped 20 minutes and 40 seconds before scheduled lift off and was delayed one day due to heavy winds in the upper atmosphere.

*February 27 — Before rescheduled launch, a piece of detached foam was discovered, which prompted a round of technical inspections ( [http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/launcher/158_post_lrg.jpgimage of defect] from ESA). Launch was rescheduled to very early March.

March

*March 2 — ESA's "Rosetta" mission is successfully launched at 07:17 GMT (08:17 Central European Time). The launcher successfully placed its upper stage and payload into an eccentric coast orbit (200 x 4000 km). About two hours later, at 09:14 GMT, the upper stage ignited its own engine to reach an escape velocity in order to leave the Earth’s gravity field and enter heliocentric orbit. The Rosetta probe was released 18 minutes later. ESA’s Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, established contact with the probe shortly after that.

*March 3 — "S-Band" communication commenced with "Rosetta" on this day. Both low- and high-gain antenna configurations worked successfully. Also, for the first time, all reaction wheels were in operation. They are compensating for large disturbances due to outgassing from the space craft, which is expected to last for a few days in the vacuum of space.

*March 4 — The power subsystem of "Rosetta" was commissioned and performed as expected.

*March 5 — The "X-Band" communication was commissioned successfully for "Rosetta".

*March 10 — The first three instruments (Cosima, Consert and Osiris) were activated and their initial commissioning activities successfully completed in the last three days. Also, the Consert antenna was deployed.

*March 11 — The "Rosetta" Science Working Team announces that the accuracy of the launch made it possible to select two asteroids as targets for a rendezvous fly-by of the probe. "Comets and asteroids are the building blocks of our Earth and the other planets in the Solar System. "Rosetta" will conduct the most thorough analysis so far of three of these objects," said Prof. David Southwood, Director of ESA’s Science Programme in a press release.

*March 17 — Over the last five days, starting on March 12, the commissioning of the lander was successfully completed. Only one step was rescheduled due to the early release of the launch locks during the first mission day.

*March 19 — The Rosetta Plasma Consortium (RPC) instruments were successfully commissioned during the previous two days. A redundant power supply seem to have failed during a repeat check of the RPC instruments. Further investigations are under way. The spacecraft booms carrying the RPC MIP (Mutual Impedance Probe) and LAP (Langmuir Probe) instruments were successfully deployed using the primary systems.

*March 26 — Three instruments successfully checked out during commissioning: ROSINA, ALICE, and VIRTIS. Each activity took two days and was well within or ahead of schedule. The High Gain Antenna (HGA) emission pattern was calibrated by performing spiral maneuvers. The gain was measured by the earth-side radio station at New Norcia.

*March 30 — The RSI (Radio Science Instrument) completed five days of commissioning.

April

*April 3 — After three passes of MIRO commissioning through more spiral maneuvers, scanning the planet Venus, this instrument checks out well.

*April 4 — The "Rosetta" spacecraft was pointed into its attitude towards Earth that is planned for the remainder of the year. Periodically, slight adjustments are planned to avoid to have sunlight hit "Rosetta" head-on. (Also called "+X" axis). The GIADA instrument was activated and commissioned.

*April 9 — The last instrument on board "Rosetta" (MIDAS) was turned on during April 4 and 5 days of commissioning concluded. At this point all science and engineering subsystems have been activated at least once.
**Use of the radio station at New Norcia was reduced from 11 hours to 7 hours, so that the Mars Express mission can use more communication time slots.

*April 15 — Five days of checkout procedures for the lander concluded successfully. This second lander activity was focussing on the lander's payload. The ALICE instrument was activated again and high voltage operations were executed. All other activities were performed as planned, including an adjustment of the internal heater system due to the decreasing distance to the Sun.

*April 17 — "Rosetta" commissioning hit a snag, today. A pyro did not fire, that was designed to allow the opening of the ALICE detector.

*April 21 — After some investigation, a backup pyro was successfully fired to release the ALICE detector door.

*April 25 — During a test sequence using an Earth pointing attitude, the thruster temperature (heated by the sun) caused an unplanned "slew" to occur. This mechanism is used to prevent the thrusters to overheat. Due to this maneuver, a planned imaging activity of the Earth-Moon system was cancelled, but all other commissioning activities were successfully completed.

May

*May 1 — The first scientific observations were performed at this date. The instruments were pointed towards comet currently close to the sun (discovered by LINEAR.)

*May 6 — In preparation for the first deep space maneuver of "Rosetta" a total of 12 pyro valves were fired, and the pressure in the reaction control system started to build up as expected.

*May 10 — The most critical deep space maneuver was successfully executed. The four thrusters on board of "Rosetta" were fired for about 3.5 hours, and a velocity change (delta v) of 152.8 metre per second was imparted to the spacecraft.

*May 16 — A planned "touch-up" deep space maneuver was successfully executed. A burn of just under 17 minutes was performed with high accuracy. Then "Rosetta" pointed its instruments again towards Comet LINEAR for observation.

*May 28 — ESA released the first pictures taken with the OSIRIS camera during the April 30 observation tests pointed at comet LINEAR. The camera produced high-resolution images of the comet from a distance of about 95 million kilometres.

June

*June 7 — "Rosetta" switched into "Cruise Mode" after completing all steps for commissioning the instruments.

July

*July 25 — A week of increased activities during the "Cruise 1" phase included the commissioning of the two navigation cameras by taking pictures of the Earth and the Moon.

2005

March

*March 4 — The first planned flyby of Earth was executed successfully. ESA asks amateur astronomers that took pictures of the spacecraft to submit them. Also, tests with the Moon as target standing in for a comet or asteroid, produced pictures and other data as expected.
*March 24 — "Rosetta" transitioned back into "cruise mode".

April

*April 15 — A test of the Near Sun Hibernation Mode (NSHM) was successfully concluded. It started on April 11 and tested a special low activity mode of "Rosetta". In this state the gyroscopes and reaction wheels are inactive, and the craft is using the star tracker and the thrusters to control its attitude, only.

July

*July 18 — ESA reported that the observation of the Deep Impact encounter with comet Tempel 1 was very successful. Science data was recorded and down-linked to Earth during the period from June 28 until July 14, and the data is currently being analysed. [http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=37699]

August

*August 8 — Mission members performed an unplanned monitor pass to investigate anomalies in the spacecraft's dynamic behavior. On mission day 213 and 216 a total of 20 grams of fuel were spent and a delta-v of 2.5 mm per second were added unexpectedly. [http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=37818]

eptember

*September 15 — Telemetry received showed that a solar flare had hit the spacecraft around September 8 or 9. The star tracker subsytem was left in an abnormal state and needed to be fixed. [http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=37921]

2006

March

*March 12 — The OSIRIS instrument was trained on the future flyby target asteroid Steins for science observation, and the data was downlinked to Earth over three days just before solar conjunction. [http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=39113]

July

*July 6 — The spacecraft comes within 0.06 AU of the ion trail of comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova and scientific observations are planned for this event. [http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=39273]

2007

February

*February 25 — The spacecraft approaches Mars up to 250 km [ [http://rosetta.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=40697 Rosetta Mars Swing-by] ] .

November

*November 14 — Second Earth swing-by for Rosetta passing within 5295 km from the surface [ [http://rosetta.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=41761 Successful Second Earth Swing-by for Rosetta] ] .

2008

eptember

*September 5 — Rosetta flies by asteroid 2867 Šteins at a distance of c. 800 km. [ [http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/080905-rosetta-steinsflyby.html European Comet Probe Swings Past Asteroid] ]

ee also

*Rosetta mission
*Comet
*Unmanned spacecraft

References