Rosetta bound for outer Solar System after final Earth swingby

11.13.2009
This morning, mission controllers confirmed that ESA’s comet chaser Rosetta had swung by Earth at 8:45 CET as planned, skimming past our planet to pick up a gravitational boost for an epic journey to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014.
Rosetta passed over the ocean, just South of the Indonesian island of Java, at exactly 08:45:40 CET, at a speed of 13.34 km/s with respect to Earth at an altitude of 2481 km. The swingby was pre-planned and fully automated, and the spacecraft was in direct communication with Earth at the time, via the ESA New Norcia Station.
The successful swingby was confirmed at 09:05 CET when mission controllers re-established contact with Rosetta via ESA’s Maspalomas station in Spain. Although a detailed analyses is in progress, spacecraft operators have confirmed that the swingby provided a boost of 3.6 km/s.
Europe’s comet chaser has now flown a little over 4500 million km of its 7100 million km journey to its destination comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This was Rosetta’s fourth planetary swingby and the third and final swingby of Earth.

[Source: http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Rosetta/SEMZC04VU1G_0.html]

Workers to break ground on New Mexico spaceport

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090616/ap_on_re_us/us_spaceport_groundbreaking

The wide-open desert of southern New Mexico has long been a key passageway: Spanish conquistadors used it to settle North America, and wagon trains and railroads rattled through on their way to California.
Today, New Mexico is hoping the forgotten stretch of cattle ranches and mountain ranges will become a gateway to space.
Gov. Bill Richardson and others are preparing to break ground Friday on construction of a terminal and hangar facility at the world's first commercial spaceport built with the idea of launching private citizens into space for profit. Some 250 people are lining up to pay $200,000 each to take the trip as early as next year.
It's called Spaceport America, a $200 million taxpayer-funded project where the sky is not the limit. From the 10,000-foot runway, spacecraft will take flight attached to an airplane, then break free and rocket 62 miles into space before returning to the facility. The flights will last about two hours and include five minutes of weightlessness.
Science fiction? Not by any stretch.

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