Rosetta Spacecraft Webcast

Four years into its ten-year journey to reach a comet, the European spacecraft Rosetta has been awakened to moonlight as an asteroid probe.

The close encounter, due in the evening of 5 September (18:58 GMT), will see Rosetta's instruments and cameras take snapshots of asteroid 2867-Steins, never seen at close quarters - a distance of only 800km.

Less than a dozen of the hundreds of thousands of asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter have been visited by a spacecraft before.

The feed at 04:00 GMT [6 Sept] will feature key moments of this exceptional flyby including the very first reactions of spacecraft controllers and scientists at ESA's Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, as the very first data and pictures arrive throughout the night between 5 and 6 September.

An additional TV feed may be made at 08:00 GMT on 6 September - please watch for announcements.

The first batch of processed images and preliminary results will be presented at a press conference taking place at ESOC starting at 10:00 GMT / 12:00 CEST on 6 September (available through web and TV streaming).

David Southwood, ESA Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, Gaele Winters, ESA Director of Operations and Infrastructure, and the key scientists and experts for the Rosetta mission, will provide the first insights into the outcome of this historic fly-by and link them to the bigger picture of space debris monitoring at ESA.

Webcast - http://www.esa.int/rosetta

More background information can be found on http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Rosetta/index.html

Transmission details:
Eutelsat W1 at 10 deg East, Transponder F5, horizontal, (SCPC, 4:2:0)
Channel F Downlink = 12721.83 MHz, SR = 5.632 Ms/s, FEC = 3/4

ESA Spacecraft Operations http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Operations/