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ESA Gives Green Light To Rosetta

Posted by timothy on from the what-languages-will-it-support dept.

JoeRobe writes "An ESA review board has given the green light for launch of the Rosetta Spacecraft in January 2003. The Rosetta Mission is one of the ESA's boldest missions to date. Over the next eight years, the spacecraft will conduct two asteroid (Otawara and Siwa) flybys and finish off by dropping a lander onto the surface of comet Wirtanen."

1 of 13 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Change in mass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    >yea, its not a huge change in mass by any means, but it doesnt have to be out in space!

    Why is that? Intertia is intertia. It doesn't matter if you are in space or not. The probe's mass is inconsequential to the orbit of the comet they will land on (assuming they can pull it off!) because the comet's mass is orders of magnitude larger. More likely to affect a comet's orbit is the loss of mass due to ablation when it gets close to the sun (and forms a tail and all that).

    -ac

    -ac