The interplanetary station Rosetta completed the third key maneuver and photographed the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Only a few weeks were left before the Rosetta station met with the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. According to the plan, the station should meet with the comet already in August, but for a successful meeting of the station with the comet, with the subsequent release of the Philae probe (the probe is on board the station) to the surface of the cosmic body, the speed of the station should be significantly reduced.

As mentioned earlier, three key and several auxiliary, so to speak, maneuvers are planned to slow down. In total, three key maneuvers (done) and 5 “secondary” (to be done) were planned, with a reset of the station’s relative speed (relative to the comet) from 775 meters per second to about a meter per second. During the third speed drop, the maneuver on June 18, the speed was reset to 88.7 meters per second, while the station’s engines worked for more than two hours, 136 minutes.

By the way, Rosetta is already “seeing” the comet, here is a picture taken on June 4.



The distance between the station and the comet at this time was about 430 thousand kilometers. Now this distance is half as much, and continues to decrease.


Video with a story about the mission of the Rosetta station and the model of the probe landing on the surface of the comet.

We hope that the station will perform the remaining 5 small maneuvers successfully, and the Philae probe will land on the surface of the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This is how it might look:







Images taken from here .