Download this article
- PDF (583 KB)

Back to the Table of Contents

An Historic Encounter: Reviewing the Outreach around ESA’s Rosetta Mission (page 44)
Dirk Lorenzen

Keywords
Rosetta, Philae, OSIRIS, NavCam, ESA, DLR, communication strategy

Summary

The Rosetta mission is a milestone in terms of science and public outreach. The European Space Agency and the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt in particular did a marvellous job of sparking global public interest, driven by various events throughout the mission. In contrast, the actions of the Max Planck Society research group in charge of the high resolution Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System were, in my opinion, the cause of some concern and bring to light an important debate in the relationship between outreach and science. This article seeks to review the outreach that surrounded the Rosetta mission and to highlight both the best practice that made it a success and the bad practice that set some aspects behind.