18 Mar 2008 11:34

Successful Earth Swing-by

On 18 October at 18:06 UTC a 42s trajectory correction manoeuvre was performed to 'fine tune' the approach trajectory to Earth for the second Earth swing- by on 13 November. The manoeuvre was extremely accurate and none of the other scheduled small correction manoeuvres before the Earth swing-by were required. Rosetta passed the Earth on 13 November at 20:57:23 UTC at a distance of 5300 km over the South Pacific. The spacecraft and its subsystems worked very smoothly. The ground segment performed nominally. Additional DSN passes were used after the flyby to download the science data from the Earth flyby as quickly as possible.

The Santiago Station was used exceptionally to cover the closest approach that couldn't be covered with ESA stations to have a complete data set available to record the possible anomalous acceleration that had been reported at earlier close Earth gravity assist manoeuvres. No effect was detected this time.

After a very small touch-up manoeuvre performed end of last year Rosetta is now on its nominal trajectory for the flyby of asteroid Steins on 5 September 2008.

Legal disclaimer
This report is based on the January SPC submission. Please see the copyright section of the legal disclaimer (bottom of this page) for terms of use.