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Space Topics: Rosetta

Mission Facts


Spacecraft

Spacecraft Mass:
Total: 3,000 kilograms (6,600 pounds)
Payload: 150 kilograms (330 pounds)
Fuel: 1,578 kilograms (3,479 pounds)
Lander weight: 90 kilograms (190 pounds)

Spacecraft description:
Box-type central structure: 2.8 meters x 2.1 meters x 2.0 meters, on which all subsystems and payload equipment are mounted
Span with both solar panels extended: 32 meters tip to tip

Rosetta
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Rosetta
Artist's impression of the Rosetta spacecraft Credit: DASA / Rosetta

Mission Timeline

Launch date: March 2, 2004
First Earth gravity assist flyby: March 5, 2005
Mars gravity assist flyby: February 25, 2007
Second Earth flyby: November 2007
Third Earth flyby: November 2009
Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko rendezvous maneuver: May 2014
Landing on the comet: November 2014
Escorting the comet: May 2014 - December 2015
Nominal mission end: December 2015
Planned operational duration: 12 years

Mission cost

The total cost of the mission is about one billion Euros (1.2 billion US dollars). This includes the cost of the spacecraft, the scientific payload (instruments and lander) and operations, as well as the costs associated with a delayed launch.

Initially, Rosetta was to have launched in January 2003, on an 8-year trek to comet Wirtanen onboard an Ariane-5 rocket from Kourou, but that date was postponed after the rocket -- one of the few in the world with the payload lift capability needed to launch the 3-ton spacecraft into orbit and send it on its way to the distant comet -- failed in a pre-launch test in December 2002. It was the fourth Ariane 5 failure in 16 attempts since the model's inauguration in the mid-1990s, and it led to ESA postponing the mission, and retargeting it from Wirtanen to 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. That presented something of a budgetary crisis for the space agency, with the cost of the Rosetta launch delay estimated to be approximately 70 million Euros (83 million US dollars).