SESAME

The Rosetta Lander standing on the comet surface

The Lander standing on the comet's surface
(Visit the Rosetta Lander Gallery!)

SESAME is one of several instruments aboard the Rosetta Lander which is to land on a comet's surface in the frame of the Rosetta Mission. This is one of ESA's cornerstone missions, scheduled to launch in 2003 to explore short-periodic comet 46P/Wirtanen.

The acronym - Surface Electrical, Seismic and Acoustic Monitoring Experiments - reveals: This instrument, covering various properties of the cometary surface, unites three single instruments, of which the electronical designs are very similar.

The components of SESAME are:

CASSE: 'Cometary Acoustic Sounding Surface Experiment'
measures mechanic/elastic properties of the cometary surface using piezo-acoustic transmitters and sensors,
PP: 'Permittivity Probe'
investigates the surface through geo-electric methods,
DIM: 'Dust Impact Monitor'
determines dust impact and production rate.

Design and manufacturing of CASSE, the SESAME electronics board and the integration of the components are managed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Space Simulation, Cologne.

The results of SESAME will give us big hints in understanding how comets, these primitive bodies remaining from the early days of our solar system, have formed and thus, how the solar system, including the Earth, was born.

(For background informations to Rosetta, Comets, etc. click here.)

12/07/98, Michael Kretschmer, DLR - Institute of Space Simulation , D-51170 Cologne , Germany