[BAA-ebulletin 00823] Rosetta mission update

[BAA electronic bulletins service]

As many members will be aware, the European Space Agency's Rosetta
spacecraft will attempt the first ever landing on the surface of a
comet tomorrow afternoon, Wednesday Nov 12.

BAA Council member Nick James is also the Lead Engineer for the
project at BAE Systems in Chelmsford. Last night he gave me an update
on the sequence of events we can expect over the next few days, and
you can hear what he had to say in a video released this morning on
the BAA website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3jXMELkccQ

The key moments on Wednesday will be:

06:00 - Rosetta delivery manoeuvre
07:35 - Final Go/No go
09:03 - Philae separates from Rosetta
09:43 - Loss of Rosetta signal during post-delivery manoeuvre
10:53 - Regain signal from Rosetta
11:59 - First descent data
16:02 - Predicted landing time
17:35 - Expected receipt of first 360 deg panorama

All times are UTC (GMT), Earth received time. Events at the spacecraft
happen 28 minutes earlier.

We have our fingers crossed that all goes well, and will, of course,
publish updates on the BAA website as soon as we hear news!

Dominic Ford, BAA Website Manager