Friday, January 24, 2014

ESA’s ‘sleeping beauty’ wakes up from deep space hibernation

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ESA’s ‘sleeping beauty’ wakes up from deep space hibernation20 January 2014 It was a fairy-tale ending to a tense chapter in the story of the Rosetta space mission this evening as ESA heard from its distant spacecraft for the first time in 31 months.
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There was a teleconference on what Rosetta will be up to now that it has been awakened from its hibernation. 
The following web site has a lot of information and images about Rosetta.
- LRK -

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Rosetta Media Teleconference
Jan. 24, 2014
NASA is hosting a media teleconference at 9 a.m. PST (12 p.m. EST) Friday, Jan. 24, to discuss the road ahead for the three U.S. science instruments, as well as other NASA support, that are part of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta mission. Having been reactivated Monday after a record 957 days in hibernation, the spacecraft will be the first to orbit a comet and land a probe on its nucleus. 
The Rosetta mission could help inform NASA's asteroid initiative, which will be the first mission to identify, capture and relocate an asteroid for astronauts to explore.
Audio of the event will be streamed live at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio
Participants:
James Green, director of planetary science, NASA Headquarters, Washington
Mark McCaughrean, ESA senior scientific advisor,  Noordwijk, the Netherlands
Matthew Taylor, ESA Rosetta project scientist, Noordwijk
Claudia Alexander, U.S. Rosetta project scientist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Art Chmielewski, U.S. Rosetta project manager, JPL
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Awakened and now to be checked out.
More will follow as it tags along with the comet if all goes well.
- LRK -

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Jan. 24, 2014
RELEASE 14-033
NASA Instruments on European Comet Spacecraft Begin Activation Countdown

Three NASA science instruments are being prepared for check-out operations aboard the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, which is set to become the first to orbit a comet and land a probe on its nucleus in November.

Rosetta was reactivated Jan. 20 after a record 957 days in hibernation. U.S. mission managers are scheduled to activate their instruments on the spacecraft in early March and begin science operations with them in August. The instruments are an ultraviolet imaging spectrograph, a microwave thermometer and a plasma analyzer.

"U.S. scientists are delighted  the Rosetta mission gives us a chance to examine a comet in a way we've never seen one before -- in orbit around it and as it kicks up in activity," said Claudia Alexander, Rosetta's U.S. project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "The NASA suite of instruments will provide puzzle pieces  the Rosetta science team as a whole will put together with the other pieces to paint a portrait of how a comet works and what it's made of."

Rosetta’s objective is to observe the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko up close. By examining the full composition of the comet's nucleus, and the ways in which a comet changes, Rosetta will help scientists learn more about the origin and evolution of our solar system and the role comets may have played in seeding Earth with water, and perhaps even life.
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Thanks for looking up with me. 
- LRK -
 
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -

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