EUTELSAT 7B satellite lines up for live broadcast of Rosetta mission’s historic comet landing Free-to-air broadcast on November 12 available live across Europe

9 November 2014

The EUTELSAT 7B satellite of Eutelsat Communications is part of an exceptional infrastructure put in place by ESA to share the historic landing of the Philae lander on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 12 November.

ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft arrived at Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 6 August after a ten-year journey through the Solar System. The landing site, currently known as Site J and located on the smaller of the comet’s two ‘lobes’, was selected just six weeks after Rosetta arrived at the comet.

The mission’s lander, Philae, will separate from the Rosetta spacecraft on 12 November at 08:35 GMT/09:35 CET from a distance of 22.5 km from the centre of the comet. It will land about seven hours later, with confirmation expected to arrive at Earth at around 16:00 GMT/17:00 CET.

Three control centres are involved in the landing: the Rosetta Mission Operations Centre at ESA’s Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany; the Lander Control Centre at DLR in Cologne, Germany; and the Lander Science Operations and Navigation Centre at CNES in Toulouse, France. Activities at each control centre will be closely linked and will be featured in a combined English-language ESA TV programme broadcast from ESOC.

Viewers across Europe can watch the climax to the Rosetta mission via the EUTELSAT 7B satellite located at 7° East