Rosetta Mars Flyby Pics

February 27, 2007 1:03 PM

ESA's Rosetta probe just flew by Mars en route to a deep space rendezvous with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. During the 200 km close flyby, the Rosetta's Philae Lander camera got this lovely view of the craft's solar panel backdropped by the Martian arc, plus an animation of the moon Phobos' shadow on the Martian surface, and more lovely Mars imagery.
posted by brownpau (14 comments total)

High resolution!
posted by brownpau at 1:23 PM on February 27, 2007

This seems appropriate here. [via]
posted by basicchannel at 1:46 PM on February 27, 2007

Wicked awesome.
posted by steef at 1:57 PM on February 27, 2007

Whoa.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 2:12 PM on February 27, 2007

Rosetta was launched in February 2004, will do 2 more Earth "fly-bys" and reach its destination in 2014.

Oh, what man can do.
posted by jaronson at 4:16 PM on February 27, 2007

Space is awesome.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 5:30 PM on February 27, 2007

Oh, what man can do.

And what we can't: we haven't even reached the end of the block*.
[*via NASA-JPL's Solar System Simulator.]
posted by cenoxo at 6:26 PM on February 27, 2007

Fun facts about those solar arrays: They are about 30 metres tip to tip, and total surface area is 64 m^2. The probe is the only solar powered one (planned) to go as far from the sun as jupiters orbit.
posted by Catfry at 7:04 PM on February 27, 2007

In the vicinity of the earth the arrays generate about 8000 watt. This drops to 400 w at the furthest point from the sun that Rosetta is supposed to go, barely enough to keep the probe alive and producing science data.
posted by Catfry at 7:19 PM on February 27, 2007

When the Galileo and Cassini probes were designed they didn't even think of using solar arrays. Shows a bit about how far the technology has come in the intervening years.
posted by Catfry at 7:22 PM on February 27, 2007

Thanks for the Rosetta update. Now I'm just wishing we had some sort of live coverage of the New Horizons flyby of Jupiter happening right now ...
posted by intermod at 7:33 PM on February 27, 2007

Beautiful, Beautiful Mars!
I want to go!
posted by Dizzy at 8:45 PM on February 27, 2007

Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says
posted by homunculus at 4:58 PM on February 28, 2007

Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft has sent back images of a huge volcanic eruption on Jupiter's moon Io.
posted by homunculus at 11:33 PM on March 1, 2007