Rosetta Update
On Sunday 25 February, ESAs Rosetta probe will come, on its journey to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, within 250 kilometres of the surface of planet Mars. This critical swingby manooevre uses the gravity of the Red Planet to speed up Rosetta towards its final target. Rosetta was launched on 2 March 2004 and is the first probe ever designed to enter orbit around a comet and release a lander onto its surface. But before, it will have performed three Earth and one Mars swingbys in all.
Today's Exchange includes pre-event footage for the swingby, including new 3-D animations, soundbites by Rosetta Project Scientist Gerhard Schwehm and a review of Rosetta science observations in the 3 years since launch.
The script is online now as a PDF file under http://television.esa.int/photos/EbS50943.pdf
A WMV preview clip will be online early on 23 February under http://esatv-movies.e-vision.nl/videos/mphi/rosetta_flyby_22-02-07_wmphigh.wmv
A broadcast quality Mpeg-2 file (ca 1000 MB) will be online early

Title : Rosetta swings past Mars
00:00:00 Start of A-Roll
00:00:40 After its swing-by of Earth in March 2005, ESA's Rosetta comet chaser is about to make the second of its four planetary flybys.
00:00:51 A few months ago, its cameras saw Mars in the distance, shining brightly against the Milky Way.
00:00:56 On February 25, the spacecraft will go round the far side of the red planet, swooping to within only a few hundred kilometres of its surface.
00:01:05 A gravity assist manoeuvre that will alter its course for the next leg of its ten-year odyssey.
00:01:13 Since the probe's launch in March 2004, several missions have added new light on the nature and composition of comets.
00:01:21 Images of comet Tempel-1 taken by Deep Impact showed the wide variety of over-lapping surfaces, and ejecta from the projectile fired into its nucleus highlighted the extremely fine surface dust covering water-ice below. 00:01:39 Another NASA team made history by obtaining cometary