Rosetta

Rosetta

(roh-zet -ă) An international ESA mission to rendezvous with a comet. It was approved in 1993 as a ‘cornerstone’ mission of ESA's Horizon 2000 program, and the original plan was to bring back to Earth samples taken from a comet's nucleus. The spacecraft was to consist of a cruising module coupled with a landing module and Earth reentry module. The object of the mission was later changed to an 18-month analysis of cometary material. Rosetta was scheduled for launch in 2003 to rendezvous with Comet 46P/Wirtanen in 2011. But the timetable for launch slipped by a year and this fact necessitated the selection of a different target. Thus on Mar. 2 2004 the 3000-kg Rosetta craft was launched from Kourou, French Guiana, by an Ariane-5 rocket and set to encounter Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. Rosetta's journey to the comet involves three gravity-assist flybys of the Earth and one of Mars. It will pass close to two asteroids, (2867) Steins and (21) Lutetia. Rosetta's task on reaching the comet will be to enter orbit around it and accompany it on its inward journey toward the Sun. The main Rosetta craft will deploy a lander called Philae, which will touch down on the comet's nucleus and carry out on-the-spot measurements of the chemical and physical makeup and properties of the nucleus and coma. It is hoped that these measurements will advance our understanding of the origin of comets, the relationship between cometary and interstellar material, and the implications of that relationship regarding the origins of the Solar System. The nominal end of the Rosetta mission will come when Churyumov-Gerasimenko passes through perihelion in late 2015.

Collins Dictionary of Astronomy © Market House Books Ltd, 2006

Rosetta

(1) See RosettaNet and HD-ROSETTA.

(2) An emulator from Apple that ran PowerPC-based applications on Intel-based Macs under OS X when Apple transitioned from Power to Intel x86 CPUs (see Intel Mac). Introduced in 2006 with Apple's first Core Duo-based laptops, Rosetta ran all PowerPC applications except those that used specific instructions in G5 processors (see G5).

Named after the Rosetta Stone, which inscribed a decree in 196 BC of the Egyptian King Ptolemy V in three languages, the Rosetta emulator was discontinued in 2011 with the Lion version of Mac OS X.

Rosetta 2 - For ARM-Based Macs
Starting in late 2020, Apple once again began switching hardware platforms (see Apple M1). Rosetta 2 runs Intel x86 applications in ARM-based Macs.

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