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ROSETTA
 ROSETTA
ROSETTA is a European Space Agency mission to Comet
Wirtanen. The launch is scheduled for January 2003 and
in 2012 the ROSETTA space probe will become a satellite
of the cometary nucleus and drop a lander on its surface.
The Space Research Centre participates in the experiments
MUPUS, involving a penetrator of the cometary nucleus,
and VIRTIS, to monitor the surface and atmosphere of
the nucleus in the visual and infrared range.
MUPUS
MUPUS - thermal experiment for the lander payload of
the cometary ESA mission, ROSETTA.
The Team
An international team of the MUPUS has been provided
by - T. Spohn (Principal Investigator - PI) and
- K. Seiferlin (Co-PI) from the Institut für
Planetologie (IfP), WWU Münster, Germany.
The MUPUS team with SRC, PAS, Warsaw includes the
persons:
- Marek Banaszkiewicz, Jerzy Grygorczuk, Stanis³aw Gadomski,
Jacek Krasowski, Marek H³ond, Wojciech Marczewski, Jacek
Leliwa-Kopystyński, Konrad Kossacki. The team have been
working on the instrument for six years.
The instrument of MUPUS and its capabilities are broadly
documented on more than 1266 pages of top-level official
documents available in an archive on the server sibelius.cbk.waw.pl
Results
Main achievement of work in 2001 is rolling up qualification
of the MUPUS instrument to the mission and commiting
it for integration on the board of the Roland lander.
The sixth year of the project has been completed by
delivery of the MUPUS Flight Model (FM) to DLR. The
instrument passed successfully a long series of qualification
and acceptance tests. The tests included a shock
test with a pulse of 1000 g's in magnitude, provided
on the Engineering Quality Model (EQM). Integration
process to the board of RoLand lander have been provided
by MPAe (Max Planck Intitut für Aeronomie), Lindau.
The process released a phase of tests on the level of
lander. The below enclosed image presents the instrument
under preparation for Vacuum Thermal tests provided
in IABG, Ottobrun, Munich during November 2001. The
tests proved intended performance correct in vacuum
conditions in temperature of -1800C
in system environment of the lander.  Another
series of tests is scheduled for February 2002 and includes
functional tests of MUPUS in cooperation to the lander
anchoring system. Through the end of 2001 the lander
passesed a procedure of its delivery to ESTEC, ESA,
the Netherlands provided by DLR and MPAe, Lindau. During
the year of 2002 the lander will be tested on higher
levels of integration to prepare the payload to a final
phase of a launch.
Cooperation to the Ground Segment-RLGS
A launch of the ROSETTA mission is scheduled for January
2003, Kourou, Guyana. Landing on the comet is predicted
for about July 2012. Performance of the mission is to
be controlled by the consortium of ESA, CNES (Toulouse,
France) and DLR (Köln, Germany) which has defined a
sub-consortium RLGS (Rosetta Lander Ground Segment)
dedicated to control all activities of the lander. Through
the end of 2001 the RLGS activities over a 15-year long
program have been defined and approved. The program
obliges all the teams to provide particular subsystems
and experiments to close cooperation in the following
areas:Apart from the scientific program, the participants
of the Assembly were invited to the following events:
1) Commissioning phase - definition and verification.
- The payload will be finally committed for duty in
the middle of 2003 in effect of few 10-day test sessions
after a launch in the first year of the cruise to the
comet Wirtanen. The phase is planned to prove health
of the payload. During 2002 - that is before a launch,
there are few sessions planned to verify test contents
of the aimed commissioning phase. During the years after
2003 there are several health test sessions planned.
Till the time of rendevous of the spacecraft with the
comet, next phases of approach, descent and landing
are to be verified in definition of related operations.
The team contribution may be also required to verify
activities from the Earth.
2) Maintenance of reference tests on the Earth
- according to needs and requirements related to all
phases of the mission. The tasks in this area mean delivery
of:
a) Spare model - MUPUS-FS (Flight Spare) - fully
compatible with the flight model including space qualification.
The FS is to be delivered to DLR, Köln in the middle
of 2002.
b) reference model - MUPUS-GRM (Ground Reference
Model) - compatible with the flight model on operational
level. The GRM is predicted for testing in laboratory
conditions on the Earth. The model is to be delivered
to the IfP, WWU, Münster by the end of 2002. Fundamental
works on the FS model have just started.
3) Knowledge preservation activities. - All knowledge
on the instrument and its performance has to be preserved.
The requirement concerns all phases of its design, manufacturing
and qualification - STM, EQM, FM, FS, GRM. The teams
are obliged to create a proper archive and maintain
it operational up to the end of mission and beyond according
to the requirements from SONC (Science Operation Navigation
Centre - CNES, Toulouse). The task includes updates
of test results obtained in incoming phases of the mission.
Responsibilities for the works are carried by the IfP,
Münster, but have to be shared by SRC, PAS from the
nature of past, current and future cooperation in the
long term project. Works on an archive have been undertaken
in SRC, PAS in 2001.
Terrestrial Applications of the experiment
Long term maintenance of a space experiment require
sharing related costs and efforts with terrestrial applications
to bring effects extended on not directly related areas
of life. This sort of requirement is commonly posed
to majority of space experiments by ESA and national
space agencies.  The
experiment MUPUS is capable of finding application in
area of remote sensing used for monitoring Earth's environmental
conditions. Since the year 2000 the experiment MUPUS
has been included in the educational program of the
Inter-Disciplinary Course on Environment Preservation
(MSOŠ) held and conducted by Prof. J.R. Olźdzki from
the Department of Geography, University of Warsaw.
During several campaigns of the course held in Szymbark,
Poland the MUPUS sensors were employed for investigations
on thermal behaviour of soil. The investigations were
performed with assistance of students in a range of
fundamental science contents of the MUPUS experiment
as dedicated to space operations. A sample of results
obtained in the course is presented above. The image
(obtained by means of software written by K. Seiferlin
and dedicated to the space experiment) is a thermal
map showing a daily history of temperature in soil layers
deep down to 40 cm below surface (from top to bottom
on the image) versus time (24 hours from left to
right on the image) within scanning 16 sensors once
per minute starting from the time of Sunset. Arrows
on the image indicate minimal temperature value of a
day in particular layers. Time dependence of temperature
values is related to physical properties of the medium
surrounding the sensors (thermal conductance, mass density,
porosity).
These properties are just specific scientific goals
of the space experiment on the comet when investigated
in cooperation with all others instruments on board
of the lander in the mission. Similar properties studied
on the Earth also have a key importance in environmental
investigations. Results obtained that way on the Earth
have been agreed as a proof of potential capabilities
of the experiment MUPUS, for studying metamorphism of
snow and ice covers on the Earth. Recently the IfP,
WWU has just opened the program EXTASE for studying
snow and ice covers on the Earth founded by WWU and
DLR.
The
SRC, PAS offered to the IfP its contribution to the
program EXTASE in a range of related tasks similar to
that made for the experiment MUPUS. Some efforts on
including the method of MUPUS to a Polish national program
on soil investigations have been undertaken. An offer
on a national program will proposed to Institute of
Agro-Physics, PAS, Lublin and Technical University of
Kielce. (W. Marczewski)
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