From Imagination to Reality, the International Rosetta Mission
- Paper number
IAC-08.A3.I.4
- Author
Dr. Claudia Alexander, NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, United States
- Year
2008
- Abstract
The International Rosetta Mission, ESA's third Cornerstone mission, began as an ESA initiative, with NASA participation. The initiative was borne out of the successful international collaboration to comet Halley that produced the first nucleus pictures with ESA's GIOTTO mission. Following that exciting first foray into the comet environment, European comet scientists worked within ESA to elevate an orbiter and lander mission (Rosetta) to a cornerstone mission. At the same time, NASA's Craf/Cassini Mission was in the development phase, an ambitious, flag-ship style mission to both a comet and the planet Saturn. The comet portion of the Craf/Cassini concept proved to be problematic, and the collaboration with ESA more promising. The ESA/NASA collaboration on Rosetta was worked at NASA by Jurgen Rahe, who advocated an official NASA role on Rosetta and worked for this inside the agency, and by Marcello Coradini who was his ESA counterpart as head of the planetary science and exploration program. As this process matured, exchanges between decision makers at both NASA and ESA rounded out the possibilities and what part in Rosetta was agreeable to both agencies, and circa early 1995, an announcement of opportunity was issued. Rosetta would be the first mission to both orbit a comet and land a surface science package on the nucleus. Difficult deep space navigation, a first for ESA, implied that a significant portion of the collaboration would be the role of NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) in a back-up support role. NASA contributed the first ultraviolet spectrometer to be flown to a comet environment, as well as the first millimeter/submillimeter spectrometer flown into inter-planetary space. In the end, NASA withdrew its support for a joint NASA/CNES lander, leaving the mission with its sole lander, now known as Philae, and sponsored by a European consortium lead by Germany, France, and Italy (DLR, MPS, MPE, CNES, ASI, KFKI, RAL, FMI, STIL, IWF Graz). Rosetta successfully launched on March 2, 2004, enjoyed two gravity assists at the Earth, one at Mars, and made observations in support of the Deep Impact mission to comet Tempel 1. Rosetta will make first observations of an E-type asteroid in September, 2008, just three weeks before this conference. Rosetta will arrive at its primary target, comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014, thereafter orbiting the comet for seventeen months as it completes a turn around the Sun. This paper will present the impetus for this incredible mission and some of the principle results that have already been returned.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
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