ESA Science & Technology - Lutetia flyby navigation campaign up to 1 July 2010

This plot shows the situation in the target plane for Rosetta's flyby of asteroid Lutetia on 10 July 2010. It is based on radiometric data and ground-based astrometric data, as well as the optical navigation data from Rosetta's on-board cameras up to and including 1 July 2010.

The target plane is a planar coordinate system centred on the asteroid and is used for targeting during this close flyby. The target relative position of Rosetta for the flyby is marked in green and is 3160 km from asteroid Lutetia (at the origin of the plot, direction indicated with arrow).

Successively more accurate determinations of Rosetta's predicted point relative to the target were obtained using navigation data up to 21 June (blue), 28 June (orange) and 1 July (grey). For each date the determined position relative to the asteroid (cross) and the associated 3-sigma error ellipse are given, together with the number of images from Rosetta's on-board cameras that were included in the solution.

Evolution of the solution in the target plane from 21 June to 1 July:

Up to 1 July, 55 images have been obtained with each of Rosetta's two navigation cameras (NAVCAMs) and 46 images with the OSIRIS narrow angle camera (NAC). Three of the NAVCAM images were not used in this latest solution.

Rosetta's projected position in the target plane now lies 3162 km from Lutetia and 15 km from the target. The error-ellipse has semi-axes of 32 × 16 km. The predicted time of closest approach is 15:44:55.97 UTC with a 3-sigma uncertainty of 7.30 seconds.

Also see the related image in right-hand menu for the previous plot of earlier solutions from 28 June.