The Rosetta mission is one of the most challenging ever attempted. Started 2nd March 2004 Rosetta will use fly-bys of Mars and Earth to accelerate and then rendezvous with comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It will land, take probes - some 4.6 billion years old - to find out if life on Earth was initiated by comet seeding.
This morning at 03:57 CET, mission controllers at ESOC, ESA’s Space Operations Centre in Germany, confirmed Rosetta’s first successful gravity assist flyby of Mars. The spacecraft is now on the correct track towards Earth travelling at ~78.000 kph relative to the Sun to fullfil a second Earth fly-by November this year. Third one will happen November 2009. Then with enough speed Rosetta falls into deep-space hibernation 2011.
2014, after a journey of 7.1 billion km the spacecraft goes in orbit to Churyumov-Gerasimenko. After successful touchdown the lander - called Philae - will screw into and fix itself onto the comet. All probes are supposed to answer big questions: the origin of comets, the relationship between cometary and interstellar material and do comets transport and spread organic matter.
Mission factsheet
Niklas Edberg: The Rosetta Mars Flyby
Picture: Mars seen from 240 000 km - 24 February at 19:28 CET - Credit: ESA © 2007 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
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