Abstract
ESA had little experience of sending spacecraft far beyond Earth orbit, so it was not surprising that, in some ways, the design of the Rosetta orbiter was fairly traditional, it being based upon the Eurostar platform used by many European communications satellites and consisting of a box-shaped central frame and aluminum honeycomb platform whose dimensions were 2.8 × 2.1 × 2.0 meters.
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Notes
- 1.
Of course, at large distances from the Sun, the Earth and Sun lie in roughly the same direction.
- 2.
Astrium was subsequently renamed Airbus Defence & Space.
- 3.
A hypergolic fuel ignites spontaneously when mixed with the oxidizer. This simplifies the propulsion system by eliminating the need for mechanical ignition.
- 4.
Mars Express was originally meant to fly after Rosetta, so a lot of design features and subsystems developed for Rosetta were used in Mars Express and its sister craft, Venus Express.
- 5.
Two additional deep space antennas would be inaugurated by ESA before Rosetta encountered Comet 67P.
- 6.
The UK initially intended to provide two gas analyzers – one called Ptolemy for the lander, and Berenice for the orbiter. The development program ran into technical difficulties and in summer 2000 it became clear that the UK team had neither the time nor the resources to make both instruments, so it was decided to develop only Ptolemy for the lander.
- 7.
This type of battery has the highest energy density of any lithium battery. Although not rechargeable, they have an extremely long shelf-life that makes them ideal for low power consumption devices which run for years.
- 8.
EADS was the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company.
- 9.
The modifications included lengthening the tanks in the upper stage to accommodate additional propellants.
- 10.
To keep temperatures onboard the upper stage under control during its 105 minutes of coasting, it was rotated around its longitudinal axis in ‘barbeque mode’. In addition, the storable propellants were pre-heated to deliver proper ignition.
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Bond, P. (2020). Anatomy of a Mission. In: Rosetta: The Remarkable Story of Europe's Comet Explorer. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60720-3_5
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