Rosetta successfully swings-by Mars

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At 03:57 CET today mission controllers at ESOC ESAs Space Operations Centre in Germany confirmed Rosettas successful swingby of Mars a key milestone in the 7.1-thousand-million km journey of this unique spacecraft to its target comet in 2014. Two-col ...
At 03:57 CET today, mission controllers at ESOC, ESA's Space Operations Centre in Germany, confirmed Rosetta's successful swingby of Mars, a key milestone in the 7.1-thousand-million km journey of this unique spacecraft to its target comet in 2014. Two-colour composite of Mars seen by the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on 24 February at 19:28 CET from a distance of about 240 000 km. Image resolution is about 5 km. The greenish regions are clouds above the red surface of Mars. Credits: ESA © 2007 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

There was considerable relief today at ESA's Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. In the early hours, spacecraft controllers, flight dynamics experts, engineers and scientists were able to see a spacecraft playing 'cosmic billiards'.


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