The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
The location of Rosetta with respect to the Sun and several planets in the Solar System on 30 September 2016. On this day, Rosetta will be about 573 million km from the Sun and 720 million km from Earth. The one-way signal travel time will be about 40 minutes.
In addition, from 1 October, the teams would also be facing reduced communications due to ‘conjunction’. That is, the comet and spacecraft will be behind the Sun as seen from Earth – another contributing factor to concluding the mission by this time.
The image is a screenshot from the Where is Rosetta? tool.