Rendezvous with a comet: The Rosetta Mission

About the talk

In the first interplanetary mission to land a scientific probe onto the surface of a comet more than 500 million km from Earth, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft has been in interplanetary flight through the solar system for more than 12 years. It’s travelled a total distance of more than 8 billion km – five times around the Sun – and is now orbiting Comet-67P after making history by landing on the comet in 2014. Rosetta has been orbiting the comet for more than 18 months, making millions of scientific measurements. It will have achieved many firsts in space exploration history when it completes its mission in September this year.

Join us to hear first-hand from a Rosetta space engineer about the building, testing and launch of the Rosetta orbiter and Philae lander spacecraft, and the mission highlights – including detailed images and what we’ve learned so far from the scientific results the orbiter has collected.

About the Speaker

Warwick Holmes was born in Sydney in 1961 and lived his junior years in Adelaide and Canberra. He graduated from Sydney University with degrees in Science and Electrical Engineering and a Master’s degree in Technology Management from the University of NSW.

For 29 years Warwick worked in Europe exclusively on the development of European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft including: Scientific, Earth Observation, Telecommunications, Navigation and Manned spacecraft programs. He specializes in spacecraft avionics system engineering, focusing on the verification of hardware and software of complex spacecraft systems.

Warwick has had direct engineering responsibility for the integration, testing and launch of 10 different ESA spacecraft with mass totaling 37 tons successfully launched and operating in orbit, with each spacecraft program valued over A$1 billion. During the Rosetta program, he was employed as a staff member of the European Space Agency as an Avionics System Engineer.

Warwick has performed five launch campaigns from the ESA Launch Base in French Guiana - South America, using the Ariane-3, Ariane-4, Ariane-5 and Soyuz-STB launch vehicles. On the Rosetta project, he was designated the "Spacecraft Support Team leader" (SST) responsible for giving the final "Go-for-Launch" call from French Guiana to the Flight Operations Director in ESOC Germany.

The Shine Dome,15 Gordon Street Australian Capital Territory

Contact Information

Event Manager: Mitchell Piercey
Phone: (02) 6201 9462

5:30 PM - 7:00 PM April 20, 2016
FOR Public
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Add to Calendar 20/04/2016 5:30 PM 20/04/2016 7:00 PM Australia/Sydney Rendezvous with a comet: The Rosetta Mission

About the talk

In the first interplanetary mission to land a scientific probe onto the surface of a comet more than 500 million km from Earth, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft has been in interplanetary flight through the solar system for more than 12 years. It’s travelled a total distance of more than 8 billion km – five times around the Sun – and is now orbiting Comet-67P after making history by landing on the comet in 2014. Rosetta has been orbiting the comet for more than 18 months, making millions of scientific measurements. It will have achieved many firsts in space exploration history when it completes its mission in September this year.

Join us to hear first-hand from a Rosetta space engineer about the building, testing and launch of the Rosetta orbiter and Philae lander spacecraft, and the mission highlights – including detailed images and what we’ve learned so far from the scientific results the orbiter has collected.

About the Speaker

Warwick Holmes was born in Sydney in 1961 and lived his junior years in Adelaide and Canberra. He graduated from Sydney University with degrees in Science and Electrical Engineering and a Master’s degree in Technology Management from the University of NSW.

For 29 years Warwick worked in Europe exclusively on the development of European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft including: Scientific, Earth Observation, Telecommunications, Navigation and Manned spacecraft programs. He specializes in spacecraft avionics system engineering, focusing on the verification of hardware and software of complex spacecraft systems.

Warwick has had direct engineering responsibility for the integration, testing and launch of 10 different ESA spacecraft with mass totaling 37 tons successfully launched and operating in orbit, with each spacecraft program valued over A$1 billion. During the Rosetta program, he was employed as a staff member of the European Space Agency as an Avionics System Engineer.

Warwick has performed five launch campaigns from the ESA Launch Base in French Guiana - South America, using the Ariane-3, Ariane-4, Ariane-5 and Soyuz-STB launch vehicles. On the Rosetta project, he was designated the "Spacecraft Support Team leader" (SST) responsible for giving the final "Go-for-Launch" call from French Guiana to the Flight Operations Director in ESOC Germany.

The Shine Dome,15 Gordon Street Australian Capital Territory false DD/MM/YYYY

Contact Information

Event Manager: Mitchell Piercey
Phone: (02) 6201 9462

5:30 PM - 7:00 PM April 20, 2016

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