What challenges will Rosetta have to face during its long trip?
Ensuring that the spacecraft survives the hazards of travelling through deep space for more than 10 years is one of the great challenges. Temperature control is very important. Rosetta will be travelling from the safer environment of near-Earth space to the cold regions beyond the asteroid belt. Experts conducted some very tough pre-launch tests to confirm Rosetta’s endurance. For example, they heated the outside surfaces to more than 150 °C, and then cooled them to –180 °C in the next test. The instruments, kept insulated inside, survived undamaged.
