Discussion of ROSINA Measurements During Rosetta's (2867) Steins Flyby

Details Discussion of ROSINA Measurements During Rosetta's (2867) Steins Flyby Discussion of ROSINA Measurements During Rosetta's (2867) Steins Flyby

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.5902j&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #59.02

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Introduction:
During the ten years long journey of European's comet chaser Rosetta to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the flyby at asteroid (2867) Steins on Sept. 5, 2008 could be used for scientific measurements. The Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) [1] has obtained measurements of the total neutral particle density by the Cometary Pressure Sensor (COPS) and the contribution of atoms and molecules with mass/charge 15 and 16 by the Double Focussing Mass Spectrometer (DFMS).
Measurements:
COPS performed continuous pressure monitoring measurements from 3.5 days before to 1 day after the (2867) Steins flyby, i.e. from Sept. 02 until Sept. 06, 2008. Due to a spacecraft flip that was conducted between 40 and 20 minutes before closest approach (CA) COPS observed a pressure increase by one order of magnitude. This was triggered by the exposure of Rosetta's backside by the Sun.
DFMS measurements depict signal variations that cannot be explained by the close encounter to the asteroid and are clearly correlated to changes in the spacecraft attitude well before CA.
Further thermal characterization measurements of the spacecraft, in order to reproduce Rosetta's attitude flip during Steins flyby, on Feb. 16 to 18, 2009, confirmed that the background of both, COPS and DFMS, are strongly dependent on the attitude of the spacecraft.
Discussion/Implications:
During these thermal characterization tests both instruments investigated the desorption behaviour of the spacecraft. The COPS measurements clearly indicate outgassing from a panel of the spacecraft that is infrequently illuminated by the Sun. Composition measurements obtained by DFMS show that water is the major species that contributes to the DFMS signal.
Since the outgassing of the spacecraft seems to be a problem, this issue has to be taken into account for the operations at Lutetia flyby (July 2010) and during the operations near the comet.

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