Unfortunately it seems that my last message was delayed in transmission till after the firing had taken place. The upper stage was fired at 9:14 UTC with the probe released 18 minutes later and the solar arrays deployed at 09:54, ESA says that everything went close to prediction. The launcher was in an eccentric coast orbit of 200 by 4000 km. Any sightings, or predictions for those stages that will presumably remain in earth orbit? (I guess the rest of the mission is rapidly proceeding off topic!) There is of course information on the mission on ESA's website at http://www.esa.int -including a live video. Incidentally they also have a live webcam of their control room. Robert . ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Holdsworth" <robbonz1@xtra.co.nz> To: "Seesat List" <SeeSat-L@satobs.org> Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 9:47 PM Subject: Rosetta launched > ESA reports that Rosetta was launched at 07:17 UTC and is now in a ballistic > phase with firing of the rocket's upper stage due at 9:11 UTC- under half > an hour from the time of writing this. > > Robert Holdsworth > Wainuiomata > New Zealand > 41.2610°S, 174.9470°E > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Mar 02 2004 - 13:38:54 EST