Emily Lakdawalla • Sep 04, 2008
Rosetta's just a day away from Steins and now on target
There are new Rosetta images of Steins, still a faint speck among the background of stars. Here's an animation:
I've added a table of links to the top of our Rosetta page indicating where you can learn more about the status of the flyby. According to Daniel Muller's timeline, it looks like the ROMAP magnetometer and plasma instrument -- which is located not on the Rosetta spacecraft, but instead on its piggybacked lander, called Philae -- is just about to start a lengthy 10-hour set of observations of the space environment as the spacecraft zooms toward its encounter, now about 1 day and 1.5 million kilometers away. (Wow. 1.5 million kilometers per day is pretty fast.)