Rosetta on its way to the Outer Solar System

Paper number

IAC-05-A3.5.A.04

Author

Mrs. Elsa Montagnon, European Space Agency/ESOC, Germany

Coauthor

Dr. Paolo Ferri, European Space Agency/ESOC, Germany

Year

2005

Abstract

The International Rosetta Mission, a cornerstone mission of the European Space Agency Scientific Programme, was launched on 2nd March 2004 and is now well into its 10 years journey towards the rendezvous with comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Once reached the proximity of the comet nucleus in summer 2014, Rosetta will orbit it for about 1.5 years down to distances of a few Kilometres and deliver a lander module, Philae, onto its surface.

In its first year of flight, the spacecraft and its payload have gone through an extensive commissioning exercise, several trajectory correction manoeuvres, the first Earth gravity assist manoeuvre, one year after launch, and some important scientific operations. In summer 2005 the spacecraft will be put in Near-Sun Hibernation mode, which will allow to reduce the frequency of ground contacts to once per month over the cruise to the next gravity assist, with Mars, in February 2007.

The variety of activities carried out in the initial part of this long mission has provided mission controllers and navigation experts at ESOC with valuable in-flight experiences, which have been used to update the operations plans and concepts applied for the long duration cruise.
The approach adopted for ground contact frequency and duration has been refined, from the coarse plan existing before launch. Procedures and rules have been developed, with the aim to minimise the need for ground contacts, at the same time allowing flexible adaptation of the schedule to the planned spacecraft activities. The operations team has been reduced in various steps, with a gradual transfer of engineers and technicians to other missions’ support, in particular Venus Express. Thanks to the high degree of commonality of Rosetta and Venus Express, and also to the new concept of “family of mission” at ESOC, the transfer of personnel across the two missions could be performed in a flexible way, allowing the profile of resources to be adapted on short notice according to the needs of each mission. 
In spring and summer 2005 the Near Sun Hibernation mode will be first commissioned for the first time in-flight, and then operationally applied for a few months. It is the first time that such approach is used on an ESA spacecraft. The experience made in the initial months of flight will be used to finalise the approach for the Rosetta control for the remainder of the cruise, but also for specifying and designing new deep space missions like Bepi Colombo.

This paper describes the mission operations experiences of the first 18 months of flight, collected during the spacecraft and payload commissioning phase, the first Earth Swing-by and the first tests and application of the near-sun hibernation mode. The concepts developed to minimise ground contact and keeping a flexible size of the operations team, making use of the commonality with Venus Express, are described. The lessons learnt and their application to future deep space missions are discussed.

Abstract document

IAC-05-A3.5.A.04.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-05-A3.5.A.04.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.