| .....Rosetta is European
Space Agency (ESA) Horizon 2000
cornerstone mission number 3 designed to
rendezvous with comet 46 P/Wirtanen and
perform remote sensing investigations as
well as carrying a probe to land on the
comet's surface and perform in situ
measurements. Flybys of two asteroids,
4979 Otawara and 140 Siwa, on the way to
the comet are also planned. .....Rosetta's
design is based on a box-shaped central
frame, 2.8 m x 2.1 m x 2.0 m with an
aluminum honeycomb main platform. Two
solar panels, 32 square meters each,
extend outward from opposite sides of the
box, spanning 32 m tip-to-tip. The
spacecraft consists of two primary
modules, the Payload Support Module (PSM),
which holds the scientific
instrumentation and two payload boom
deployment mechanisms in the top part of
the frame, and the Bus Support Module (BSM),
which holds the spacecraft subsystems in
the lower part.
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