Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of acronyms and abbreviations
- PART I Engineering issues specific to entry probes, landers or penetrators
- PART II Previous atmosphere/surface vehicles and their payloads
- PART III Case studies
- 21 Surveyor landers
- 22 Galileo probe
- 23 Huygens
- 24 Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner
- 25 Deep Space 2 Mars Microprobes
- 26 Rosetta lander Philae
- 27 Mars Exploration Rovers: Spirit and Opportunity
- Appendix Some key parameters for bodies in the Solar System
- Bibliography
- References
- Index
26 - Rosetta lander Philae
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of acronyms and abbreviations
- PART I Engineering issues specific to entry probes, landers or penetrators
- PART II Previous atmosphere/surface vehicles and their payloads
- PART III Case studies
- 21 Surveyor landers
- 22 Galileo probe
- 23 Huygens
- 24 Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner
- 25 Deep Space 2 Mars Microprobes
- 26 Rosetta lander Philae
- 27 Mars Exploration Rovers: Spirit and Opportunity
- Appendix Some key parameters for bodies in the Solar System
- Bibliography
- References
- Index
Summary
ESA's Rosetta mission was launched on 2 March 2004, and is destined to reach its target comet, 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, in 2014. The lander of the Rosetta mission, named Philae, is expected to be deployed around November 2014, to make the first ever controlled landing on a comet nucleus. En route, the mission's interplanetary trajectory takes in four gravity assists, three at Earth and one at Mars, and two asteroid flybys. Having matched the comet's orbit, Rosetta will close in to perform a comprehensive remote sensing survey of the nucleus and its environment prior to final selection of the landing site and deployment of the lander.
The finally launched mission had evolved a great deal over several iterations since the initial conception of a ‘mission to the primitive bodies of the Solar System’ around 1985 as a cornerstone of ESA's new Horizon 2000 science programme (this was almost a year before ESA's Giotto spacecraft had encountered comet Halley). The mission plan has always incorporated a surface element, though initially this was to obtain a sample for return to Earth. Known briefly as the Comet Nucleus Sample Return (CNSR) mission, it had by 1987 been renamed Rosetta. By the end of 1985 a joint ESA/NASA Science Definition Team had been formed to define in detail the mission's scientific objectives; NASA being envisaged as a partner for ESA on the mission.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Planetary Landers and Entry Probes , pp. 299 - 303Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007