Rosetta comet mission on hold
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2657755.stm[^] Man, what a shame this has been cancelled... This ambitious project certainly caught my imagination. I feel sorry for the people who have put 10 years of work into this. :((
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2657755.stm[^] Man, what a shame this has been cancelled... This ambitious project certainly caught my imagination. I feel sorry for the people who have put 10 years of work into this. :((
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I love reading news reports about science. Such was the complexity of the mission, it would have taken until 2011 for Rosetta to reach its target. I thought it would take till 2011 because IT IS FAR AWAY!!! Tim Smith I'm going to patent thought. I have yet to see any prior art.
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I love reading news reports about science. Such was the complexity of the mission, it would have taken until 2011 for Rosetta to reach its target. I thought it would take till 2011 because IT IS FAR AWAY!!! Tim Smith I'm going to patent thought. I have yet to see any prior art.
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ha ha. I know, it's highly annoying! :-D
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
They meant complex as in the orbital path the satelite must take to intercept the comet. After launch in January, 2003 (the launch window opens 15 January), Rosetta will fly out to Mars for a gravity assist on 26 August 2005 and return for an Earth flyby on 21 November 2005. A flyby of the main belt asteroid 4979 Otawara (diameter 19 km) will occur on 11 July 2006 at a distance of about 1000 km on the sunward side, followed by a second gravity-assist Earth flyby on 28 November 2007. A flyby of the 110 km diameter main belt asteroid 140 Siwa at a distance greater than 1000 km will take place on 24 July 2008. After the asteroid flyby the spacecraft enters a heliocentric drift phase to intercept the comet at a point close enough to allow communication with the Earth. A rendezvous maneuver on 29 November 2011 will lower the spacecraft velocity relative to that of Comet P/Wirtanen to about 25 m/s and put it into the near comet drift phase. Some time after the comet is within 4.2 AU of the Sun, observations of the comet and the far approach trajectory phase will start. At the end of this ~90 day phase, the relative velocity between Rosetta and Wirtanen will have been reduced to 2 m/s, at a distance of about 300 comet nucleus radii. At this point landmarks and radiometric measurements are used to make a precise determination of spacecraft and comet relative positions and velocities and the rotation and gravity of the comet nucleus to fine-tune the approach. This information is used to start orbit insertion at about 60 comet radii distance at a few cm/s. At 25 comet radii a capture maneuver will close the orbit. This will occur on 22 August 2012 when Wirtanen is approximately 3.25 AU from the Sun. Polar orbits at 5 to 25 comet nucleus radii will be used for mapping the nucleus. After global studies of the nucleus are completed, about five areas (500 x 500 m) will be selected for close observation at a distance down to 1 nucleus radius. Using the information gathered from orbit, a landing site will be chosen for the Surface Science Package (SSP). The spacecraft will go into an eccentric orbit with a pericenter as low as 1 km over the landing site and an ejection mechanism will separate the SSP from the spacecraft with a maximum relative velocity up to 1.5 m/s in July of 2012. The lander will touch down on Wirtanen's surface at a relative velocity of less than 1 m/s and will transmit data from the surface to the spacecraft, which will relay it to Earth. The spacecraft will remain in orbit about the comet and make
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They meant complex as in the orbital path the satelite must take to intercept the comet. After launch in January, 2003 (the launch window opens 15 January), Rosetta will fly out to Mars for a gravity assist on 26 August 2005 and return for an Earth flyby on 21 November 2005. A flyby of the main belt asteroid 4979 Otawara (diameter 19 km) will occur on 11 July 2006 at a distance of about 1000 km on the sunward side, followed by a second gravity-assist Earth flyby on 28 November 2007. A flyby of the 110 km diameter main belt asteroid 140 Siwa at a distance greater than 1000 km will take place on 24 July 2008. After the asteroid flyby the spacecraft enters a heliocentric drift phase to intercept the comet at a point close enough to allow communication with the Earth. A rendezvous maneuver on 29 November 2011 will lower the spacecraft velocity relative to that of Comet P/Wirtanen to about 25 m/s and put it into the near comet drift phase. Some time after the comet is within 4.2 AU of the Sun, observations of the comet and the far approach trajectory phase will start. At the end of this ~90 day phase, the relative velocity between Rosetta and Wirtanen will have been reduced to 2 m/s, at a distance of about 300 comet nucleus radii. At this point landmarks and radiometric measurements are used to make a precise determination of spacecraft and comet relative positions and velocities and the rotation and gravity of the comet nucleus to fine-tune the approach. This information is used to start orbit insertion at about 60 comet radii distance at a few cm/s. At 25 comet radii a capture maneuver will close the orbit. This will occur on 22 August 2012 when Wirtanen is approximately 3.25 AU from the Sun. Polar orbits at 5 to 25 comet nucleus radii will be used for mapping the nucleus. After global studies of the nucleus are completed, about five areas (500 x 500 m) will be selected for close observation at a distance down to 1 nucleus radius. Using the information gathered from orbit, a landing site will be chosen for the Surface Science Package (SSP). The spacecraft will go into an eccentric orbit with a pericenter as low as 1 km over the landing site and an ejection mechanism will separate the SSP from the spacecraft with a maximum relative velocity up to 1.5 m/s in July of 2012. The lander will touch down on Wirtanen's surface at a relative velocity of less than 1 m/s and will transmit data from the surface to the spacecraft, which will relay it to Earth. The spacecraft will remain in orbit about the comet and make
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They meant complex as in the orbital path the satelite must take to intercept the comet. After launch in January, 2003 (the launch window opens 15 January), Rosetta will fly out to Mars for a gravity assist on 26 August 2005 and return for an Earth flyby on 21 November 2005. A flyby of the main belt asteroid 4979 Otawara (diameter 19 km) will occur on 11 July 2006 at a distance of about 1000 km on the sunward side, followed by a second gravity-assist Earth flyby on 28 November 2007. A flyby of the 110 km diameter main belt asteroid 140 Siwa at a distance greater than 1000 km will take place on 24 July 2008. After the asteroid flyby the spacecraft enters a heliocentric drift phase to intercept the comet at a point close enough to allow communication with the Earth. A rendezvous maneuver on 29 November 2011 will lower the spacecraft velocity relative to that of Comet P/Wirtanen to about 25 m/s and put it into the near comet drift phase. Some time after the comet is within 4.2 AU of the Sun, observations of the comet and the far approach trajectory phase will start. At the end of this ~90 day phase, the relative velocity between Rosetta and Wirtanen will have been reduced to 2 m/s, at a distance of about 300 comet nucleus radii. At this point landmarks and radiometric measurements are used to make a precise determination of spacecraft and comet relative positions and velocities and the rotation and gravity of the comet nucleus to fine-tune the approach. This information is used to start orbit insertion at about 60 comet radii distance at a few cm/s. At 25 comet radii a capture maneuver will close the orbit. This will occur on 22 August 2012 when Wirtanen is approximately 3.25 AU from the Sun. Polar orbits at 5 to 25 comet nucleus radii will be used for mapping the nucleus. After global studies of the nucleus are completed, about five areas (500 x 500 m) will be selected for close observation at a distance down to 1 nucleus radius. Using the information gathered from orbit, a landing site will be chosen for the Surface Science Package (SSP). The spacecraft will go into an eccentric orbit with a pericenter as low as 1 km over the landing site and an ejection mechanism will separate the SSP from the spacecraft with a maximum relative velocity up to 1.5 m/s in July of 2012. The lander will touch down on Wirtanen's surface at a relative velocity of less than 1 m/s and will transmit data from the surface to the spacecraft, which will relay it to Earth. The spacecraft will remain in orbit about the comet and make
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2657755.stm[^] Man, what a shame this has been cancelled... This ambitious project certainly caught my imagination. I feel sorry for the people who have put 10 years of work into this. :((
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I watched a documentary on the "Discovery Science Channel" this weekend about another project that was similar to this. The JPL team sent a probe, Deep Space 1, with an ion engine to an asteroid. The spacecraft used a complicated triangulation software that worked similar to the way sailers navigated with the stars centuries ago. I cant remember the specific distances, but the spacecraft came within a few hundred meters to the asteroid and tooks some photographs. (They didnt turn out well) But since the craft performed better than they had hoped (it has been running 10,000 hours, 50 times longer than they had hoped, and it has reached 78,000 miles per hour, 35,000 meters / second) they decided to send this craft off to take pictures of the comet Borelley. here is one link, but I am sure there are better ones out there: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/deep_space_1_010404.html[^]
Build a man a fire, and he will be warm for a day
Light a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life! -
A path can be complex and still require little time. Tim Smith I'm going to patent thought. I have yet to see any prior art.
Tim Smith wrote: A path can be complex and still require little time. 'Little time' is not a phrase often heard when when talking about orbital dynamics :-) No propulsion system avaiable could put the probe directly into the correct orbit, so a longer more complex route has to be taken (with the benefit of a bit of extra science on the way). Should have stuck with the original idea of Lauching it on a Russian Proton. Offical Astrium management putdown of Arianespace today went along the lines of "every sucessful launch has been a fluke." It'll be a Proton launch if it goes at all, I suspect. Stephen.