Rosetta's second Earth flyby
ESA TV Exchanges
Pursuing its ten-year journey, ESAs comet chaser Rosetta is to swing past Earth on 13 November. Launched in 2004, the probe is bound for comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko which it will reach in 2014. After passing our planet a first time in 2005 and Mars in February this year, it will be the spacecrafts third planetary swing-by, each time increasing velocity to reach its final target. Although the upcoming flyby will provide new opportunities to observe the Earth, it will mainly be used to calibrate all the probes science instruments in view of the missions first secondary scientific target in September next year, a small asteroid called Steins. This preview report about the Earth flyby includes interviews with the Rosetta mission managers and scientists.
The script is online as a PDF file under http://television.esa.int/photos/EbS53768.pdf
A WMV preview clip is online under http://esatv-movies.e-vision.nl/videos/mphi/ROSETTA_2nd_flyby_DV_07-11-07_wmphigh.wmv

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