(1) Universitaet Koeln, Germany,
(2) University of Oslo, Norway,
(3) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, USA,
(4) GRGS/GTP Toulouse, CNES, France,
(5) Universitaet Bonn, Germany,
(6) Universitaet Muenchen, Germany,
(7) DLR-GSOC Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany,
(8) MPI fuer Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany,
(9) Universitaet der Bundeswehr Muenchen, Germany,
(10) MPI fuer Aeronomie, Germany,
(11) San Jose State University, USA,
(12) University of Uppsala, Sweden,
(13) University of Wales at Cardiff, UK.
The Rosetta Radio Science Investigations (RSI) experiment was proposed to ESA for the Rosetta mission to comet P/Wirtanen. The primary scientific objectives of RSI are the investigations of the cometary gravity field, the surface and internal structure of the comet nucleus and the gas and dust of the cometary coma. RSI proposes to use the radio subsystem of the spacecraft in order to observe the Doppler frequency shift and the signal amplitude of the radio carrier waves at S-band (2.3 GHz) and X-band (8.4 GHz). The Doppler shift will be induced e.g. by the perturbed motion of the spacecraft about the irregularly shaped comet nucleus from gravity accelerations and from nongravitational accelerations due to the influx of gas and dust from jets.
This presentation will focus on the gravity field investigations with the prime objective being the determination of the bulk parameters of the nucleus (total mass and mean density) and the gravity coefficients.