More on Rosetta

trumpetplayer writes "Rosetta has had an interesting week. The investigation into the Ariane 5 ESCA failure firstly cleared the mission for launch, then cancelled it. The spacecraft will now have to be dismantled and returned for Kourou. This will be a complex affair, as the propulsion system had been filled with MMH/NTO, and was not designed to be emptied!"

Comments

Part nonsense

[FlexAgain]

The spacecraft will now have to be dismantled and returned for Kourou.

This element of the story came from the most recent BBC story (which for some reason appears to be inaccesable on the BBC web site?). There is no way that Rosetta is going to be dismantled. They will defuel it, and possibly remove some elements, but the vast majority of the spacecraft will be left assembled. Most likely it will be stored somewhere at Kourou (possibly in its shipping container) until the next launch opportunity. The last thing that ESA, Astrium, or any of the PIs would want, would be for the spacecraft to be dismantled. It would achieve nothing useful, cause any number of new faults, and require a massive amount of work and retesting.

Yes, removing the hydrazine will not be a nice exercise, but there will certainly be procedures for doing it, it just isn't something you particularily want to do with a spacecraft. The fueling process itself if pretty hazardous, and defueling won't be any safer.

Losing Wirtanen as a target is a big blow the Rosetta mission, but this is survivable, and the spacecraft can still go to another comet, this is vastly better than losing it at launch. The BBC story just seemed to be trying to dramatise things further.