Rosetta makes its first contact with Ariane 5 launcher hardware

Preparations for Flight 158 entered a new phase this week as the mission’s
Rosetta payload made its initial contact with hardware from the Ariane 5
launcher.

This activity occurred in the Spaceport’s S3B clean room, where Rosetta was
positioned on a cone-shaped adapter that serves as the interface structure
between the deep-space probe and Ariane 5.

Rosetta is now ready for its transfer to the Ariane 5 Final Assembly
building, where the probe will be encapsulated in its protective payload
fairing and then installed atop the launch vehicle.

Liftoff of Flight 158 is set for the early morning hours of February 26 from
the Spaceport’s ELA-3 launch complex. Instead of a typical launch window
used for missions geostationary satellite payloads, Flight 158 has two
specific launch slots: one at 49 seconds past 4:16 a.m., and the other at 49
seconds past 4:36 a.m.

Duration of Flight 158 also is unusual for an Ariane 5 mission. After a
standard separation of the two solid booster stages and burnout of the
central core stage, the Ariane 5’s EPS upper stage will enter a prolonged
ballistic phase, followed by its ignition at almost 2 hours after liftoff.
Rosetta will be separated from the stage approximately 14 minutes later,
embarking on an Earth escape trajectory that will lead to its encounter with
comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014.

Rosetta uses a cubic-shaped spacecraft bus built by Astrium in Germany, and
has a liftoff mass of about 3,000 kg. The comet-intercept was under
responsibility of the European Space Agency and will include the deployment
of a small lander to the surface of Churyumov-Gerasimenko.