Rosetta's OSIRIS imaging system spotted an anticyclone over the South Pacific on the morning of 13 November. The images show the scene roughly as a human eye would see it. Cloud structures over the South Pacific, seen with the OSIRIS Imaging System's narrow-angle camera on 13 November at 06:48 CET. The clouds are part of an anticyclone that is visible close to the centre of the image below.
Rosetta makes final home call Europe's Rosetta spacecraft has made its third and final flyby of Earth, a manoeuvre designed to position the probe to chase down a comet in 2014. The spacecraft's whip around the planet will have given it the extra speed it needs to take it out to the rendezvous location near Jupiter.
Images and data taken just before closest approach were downloaded this morning, and they show the lights of North America in the night and a glowing Southern Hemisphere. Read more
This morning, mission controllers confirmed that ESA's comet chaser Rosetta had swung by Earth at 8:45 CET as planned, skimming past our planet to pick up a gravitational boost for an epic journey to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. Rosetta passed over the ocean, just South of the Indonesian island of Java, at exactly 08:45:40 CET, at a speed of 13.34 km/s with respect to Earth an altitude of 2481 km. The swingby was pre-planned and fully automated, and the spacecraft was in direct communication with Earth at the time, via the ESa New Norcia Station.
Europe's Rosetta probe will make its third and final flyby of Earth on Friday as it seeks to position itself to chase down a comet in 2014. The spacecraft's whip around the planet will give it the extra speed it needs to take it out to the rendezvous location near Jupiter. Launched in 2004, Rosetta has already flown by Earth twice and Mars once.
Image of the Earth acquired with the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera from a distance of 633 000 km on 12 November 2009 at 13:28 CET. The resolution is 12 km/pixel. The image is a part of a sequence of images taken every hour through one full rotation (24 hours). The movie will be published later. || Three images with an orange, green, and blue filter were combined to create this one. The illuminated crescent is centered roughly around the South Pole (South at the bottom of the image). The outline of Antarctica is visible under the clouds that form the striking south-polar vortex. Pack ice in front of the coastline with its strong spectacular reflection is the cause for the very bright spots on the image.
The image is a part of a sequence of images taken every hour through one full rotation (24 hours).
When Europe's comet chaser Rosetta swings by Earth tomorrow for a critical gravity assist, tracking data will be collected to precisely measure the satellite's change in orbital energy. The results could help unravel a cosmic mystery that has stumped scientists for two decades. Since 1990, scientists and mission controllers at ESA and NASA have noticed that their spacecraft sometimes experience a strange variation in the amount of orbital energy they exchange with Earth during planetary swingbys. The unexplained variation is noticed as a tiny difference in speed gained or lost during the swingby when comparing that predicted by fundamental physics and that actually measured after the event.
Rosetta's first glimpse of the Moon from 4.3 million km On 8 November, Rosetta's OSIRIS instrument imaged the Moon from 4.3 million km as the satellite sped towards Earth for her final gravity-assist swingby, scheduled for 13 November 2009.
