The animation below was updated just yesterday and shows a precise rendering of the orbit that Rosetta will now follow. This animation starts off with today’s thruster burn and runs through until early October. The key points include:

  • Triangular, un-captured orbit for the first few weeks, until Rosetta gets down to about 30 km height
  • Note there must be a thruster burn at each apex of the (successively lower) triangles to keep Rosetta ‘at’ the comet; these will take place every Wed/Sun for now
  • Orbit becomes circular as we get down below 30 km and pass from the global mapping phase to the close observation phase