Earth - Rosetta's Slingshot
Friday, November 13, 2009 - 11:07
in Astronomy & Space
ESA’s comet chaser Rosetta has swung by Earth for the third and final time, skimming past our planet to pick up a gravitational boost for an epic journey to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. Rosetta passed over the ocean just South of the Indonesian island of Java at exactly 08:45:40 CET with a speed of 13.34 km/s with respect to Earth and an altitude of 2481 km. The successful swingby was confirmed at 09:05 CET and spacecraft operators have confirmed that the swingby provided a boost of 3.6 km/s. read more