ESA Science & Technology - No. 50 - Passive Cruise Mode

On the spacecraft subsystems side, on 12 October a new guidance was established for the AOCS pointing, which can be kept unchanged until the Mars swing-by in February 2007. The on-board software maintenance activities on the Star Trackers (STR) were completed on 13 October with the patching of STR A.

Due to the upcoming Venus Express launch, which will take priority on New Norcia for three days, the spacecraft was configured to sustain up to 11 days of non-coverage. The reaction wheels off-loading strategy was also adapted to cope with short-notice re-planning of ground contacts.

No operations were performed on the Payload, which is completely inactive, with the exception of SREM, that is monitoring radiation in the background in accumulation mode.

A total of 3 New Norcia passes of maximum 8 hours commanding duration were taken over the reporting period. On 28 October Rosetta was used once more as target for delta-DOR measurements over Cebreros and New Norcia.

At the end of the reporting period (DOY 301) Rosetta was at 262.6 million kilometres from the Earth (1.76 AU; one-way signal travel time was 14 minutes 35 seconds). The distance to the Sun was 257.5 million kilometres (1.72 AU).