Abstract The International Rosetta Mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) was launched on 2nd March 2004 on its 10 year journey to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko and has reached it early August 2014. The main mission objectives were to perform close observations of the comet nucleus throughout its orbit around the Sun and deliver the lander Philae to its surface. This paper describers the activities at mission operations level that allowed the landing of Philae. The landing preparation phase was mainly characterised by the definition of the landing selection process, to which several parties contributed, and by the definition of the strategy for comet characterisation, the orbital strategy for lander delivery, and the definition and validation of the operations timeline. The definition of the landing site selection process involved almost all components of the mission team; Rosetta has been the first, and so far only mission, that could not rely on data collected by previous missions for the landing site selection. This forced the teams to include an intensive observation campaign as a mandatory part of the process; several science teams actively contributed to this campaign thus making results from science observations part of the mandatory operational products. The time allocated to the comet characterisation phase was in the order of a few weeks and all the processes, tools, and interfaces required an extensive planning an validation. Being the descent of Philae purely ballistic, the main driver for the orbital strategy was the capability to accurately control the position and velocity of Rosetta at Philae’s separation. The resulting operations timeline had to merge this need of frequent orbit determination and control with the complexity of the ground segment and the inherent risk of problems when doing critical activities in short times. This paper describes the contribution of the Mission Control Centre (MOC) at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) to this mission phase and the lessons learned that can be derived from this experience.
Highlights The operations team flew a spacecraft around a comet and selected a landing site. Preparing and validating the operations for landing requires intense coordination. The separation, descent, and landing manoeuvre is a masterpiece in flight dynamics.
Rosetta mission operations for landing
Acta Astronautica ; 125 ; 30-40
2016-01-13
11 pages
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
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