Andrea Accomazzo

The U.S. Rosetta Project at its second science target: Asteroid (21) Lutetia, 2010

This paper represents the fifth in a series of updates for a mission, known as Rosetta, originally launched in 2004 for an extended rendezvous in 2014 with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. These papers are intended to build upon one another. On November 13, 2009, the Rosetta spacecraft swung by the Earth for the third and final gravity assist. The geometry of this Earth encounter provided for distant observations of the Earths moon. Eight months later, July 10, 2010, Rosetta encountered the second science target of the mission, asteroid (21) Lutetia. This paper will present, in time order, an introduction to NASAs contribution to the mission, followed by a discussion of the events of the third Earth flyby, including the issue of the boresight alignment of the remote sensing suite of instruments. We report on the instrument performance during the Lutetia encounter. We discuss the status of preparations for science planning for the prime mission. Finally, we report on our public engagement from this flyby. 1,2