No. 27 - Start of second part of the Commissioning Phase
Software upload activities for the instruments COSIMA, ROSINA and OSIRIS were successfully executed and verified on 3 to 5 September. On 6 September the second part of the Commissioning Phase began, as planned, with parallel operations of the instruments COSIMA and RPC. All planned operations were completed according to schedule on 10 September.
In addition, over the period 8 to 9 September the Lander magnetometer ROMAP was activated in parallel to the orbiter RPC magnetometer to allow parallel scientific measurements around Rosetta's closest approach to the tail of comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner (down to 0.0036 AU).
Full daily passes over the New Norcia station were taken throughout the week, with the addition of one weekly pass of 4 hours over a DSN station on 9 September.
The table below shows a chronology of the main activities in the reporting period:
|
Mission Day |
Date |
DOY |
Main Activity |
|
186 |
03/04.09.04 |
247/248 | COSIMA and ROSINA on-board software maintenance |
|
187 |
04/05.09.04 |
248/249 | OSIRIS on-board software maintenance |
|
188 |
05/06.09.04 |
249/250 | OSIRIS on-board software in-flight verification |
|
189 |
06/07.09.04 |
250/251 | COSIMA and RPC Commissioning pass 1 |
|
190 |
07/08.09.04 |
251/252 | COSIMA and RPC Commissioning pass 2 |
|
191 |
08/09.09.04 |
252/253 | COSIMA and RPC Commissioning pass 3; ROMAP parallel scientific operations |
|
191 |
09/10.09.04 |
253/254 | COSIMA and RPC Commissioning pass 4; ROMAP parallel scientific operations |
At the end of the last New Norcia pass in the reporting period (DOY 254) Rosetta was at 75.2 million km from the Earth. The one-way signal travel time was 4 minutes 10 seconds.