Temperature Control for the Rosetta Comet Surface Science Packet

One of the main payloads of ESA's Rosetta Spacecraft, planned to encounter Comet P/Wirtanen in 2011 to 2012, is a landing vehicle. This vehicle - the Rosetta Lander - is designed as a comet surface science packet and will be prepared by a consortium of European research institutes and contributed to ESA for its cornerstone mission to the comet.

The paper will present the environmental conditions and the selected solution for the Thermal Control System and will report on the results gained during a thermal balance test with the Structural & Thermal Model of the Lander in the on-surface operational mode.