The joint ESA/DLR team are working this week at ESOC, testing the Philae lander simulator together with the Rosetta engineering model (photos in Flickr).

Rosetta engineering model at ESOC. Credit: ESA/J. Mai

Rosetta engineering model at ESOC. Credit: ESA/J. Mai

ESA’s Armelle Hubault, from the Rosetta flight control team, just sent in this update:

Today, we are simulating the need for a shift in the separation time, i.e. the time when the lander separates from the Rosetta spacecraft. The purpose of this test is to verify that the procedures we have in place to shift all Lander activities is working as expected.

In our simulation, separation was originally planned at 15:00 CET, (and all the Lander data commands were uplinked as they would be, using this time). Then, we simulated a request from ESOC Flight Dynamics to shift the separation to 14:52:11 CET. At this point, we had to shift all Lander activities on board, so that everything is aligned to the new separation time.