The Rosetta Fly-by at Asteroid (2867) Steins

Details The Rosetta Fly-by at Asteroid (2867) Steins The Rosetta Fly-by at Asteroid (2867) Steins

May 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agusm.p12a..01s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2009, abstract #P12A-01

Physics

6000 Planetary Sciences: Comets And Small Bodies, 6205 Asteroids

Scientific paper

The International Rosetta Mission is one of ESA's Planetary Cornerstone Missions on its way to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. On route to the comet Rosetta has encountered its first asteroid target, main belt asteroid (2867) Steins. Closest approach occurred on 5 September 2008, 18:38:20 UT at a distance of 802.6 km. The spacecraft passed on the sunlit side of the asteroid with a relative velocity of 8.6 km/s in the plane defined by the relative velocity vector and the Sun direction. This fly-by strategy allowed continuous pointing on the asteroid before, during and after closest approach as well as passing through a phase angle close to zero. The minimum phase angle (0.27°) was reached at 18:36:23, about 2 minutes before closest approach. Optical navigation on the asteroid started already on 4 August 2008 as the spacecraft had to target the small asteroid (effective radius ~ 5 km) within accuracy better than 2 km to keep it in the field of view of the science instruments during closest approach. In addition an attitude flip manoeuvre of 20 minutes duration was performed before autonomous tracking on asteroid (2867) Steins started. Altogether 14 instruments were switched on during the fly-by, providing spatially resolved multi-wavelength observations of the asteroid and in-situ measurements of its dust, plasma, magnetic, and radiation environment. Its detailed characterization will add to the understanding the different types of asteroids and to solving the puzzle of how the solar system formed and evolved. (2867) Steins was Rosetta's first nominal scientific target in its 11.5-year mission. The next scientific encounter is however already in view. In July 2010 Rosetta will fly-by at asteroid (21) Lutetia, a 100 km-sized object (95.5 ± 4.1 km) before moving out to Jupiter's orbit to meet and explore the nucleus of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

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