Intense Preparations for ESA’s Rosetta with Asteroid
“We will practise placing Rosetta’s cameras into their proper tracking mode and, as we get closer to Steins, we will actually start tracking the asteroid, and use the data to refine our estimates of Steins’ orbit and how to adjust Rosetta’s trajectory,” said Sylvain Lodiot, an engineer assigned to Rosetta.
On September 5th, the European Space Agency’s European Space Operations Center in Germany will be preparing for its comet-chasing spacecraft to swing close to the Stein asteroid fly-by. Led by veteran Spacecraft Operations Manager (SOM) Andrea Accomazzo, the Spacecraft Operations Engineers five-person team is directly supported and shared between Rosetta, Mars Express, and Venus Express.
The Rosetta is scheduled to pass by the asteroid Steins at a speed of 8.6 km/s with her closest approach on the 5th at a distance of 800 km. Prior to the fly-by, checking out and verifying the spacecraft’s 11-instruments is a necessity of the engineers with the Rosetta Science Operations Center in Madrid, Spain. This will be done through simulations on August 7, 14, and 21 in order to confirm and practice and procedures to prevent any unforeseen problems.
Science observations will begin to develop about 2 hours prior to approaching the asteroid, running until 2 hours afterward. The images that will be among the first downloaded after the fly-by will be done by the OSIRIS and VIRTIS, available on September 6th.
On August 14 and 28, in addition to September 2, 4, and 5, a series of Trajectory Correction Maneuvers of thruster firings to align its trajectory relative to Steins are possible. Before the closest approach to the asteroid of Rosetta’s 36 and 12 hour TCM slots, testing and practicing must occur of the tight telecommand uplink windows. Also during the simulations the command-sets to Rosetta for the fly-by must occur by the team, with the timing of the mission control activities highly crucial.
Adopting the strategy of “payload break points” was necessary to recover payload operations if needed, where a series of default payload configurations can be used. “We have break points set to the times of the Trajectory Control Manoeuvres and one set just 2 hours prior to closest approach. This work has involved a lot of cooperation between us, the science and flight dynamics teams,” said Lodiot.
This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 10:43 pm and is filed under Mars News, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
