The Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT)
Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Palo Alto, Calif. designed and
built key components for ROSINA –the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for
Ion and Neutral Analysis– an instrument ready for launch on Feb. 26,
2004 on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosetta spacecraft. The goal
of the international mission is to rendezvous, orbit, and land on Comet
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014, in an effort to answer questions
about the origin of our Solar System.

“Rosetta carries more instruments than any previous scientific
spacecraft — that makes it challenging and one of the most exciting
missions ever,” said Dr. Claudia Alexander, U.S. Project Scientist for
the mission and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientist. “We
anticipate major discoveries, just like Galileo and Cassini.”

Comets are icy preserves of the material present during the formation
of the solar system. Ground-based studies show strong indications that
beneath the surface, complex organic molecules, such as hydrogen,
carbon, oxygen and nitrogen reside. These elements make up nucleic and
amino acids, which are essential for creating life. Scientists have
long wondered if life on Earth was spawned by a chance comet encounter,
and Lockheed Martin helped develop ROSINA with the University of Bern
and other institutions to pursue the answer.

ESA’s spacecraft aims to be the Rosetta Stone of the solar system –the
decipherer of the many secrets comets hold in their cores– and is
named for the historic Rosetta Stone, the key to decoding the
hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt. Only an instrument like the one
designed by the international team including Lockheed Martin could test
the various theories regarding comets’ physical and chemical
composition, mass, surface and evolution.

ROSINA will perform composition analysis on the Rosetta mission,
utilizing a mass spectrometer that uses electric and magnetic fields to
map the mass of an ion to its chemical composition. ROSINA will also
analyze particles in the comet’s atmosphere by mass, physical and
chemical composition, temperature, and velocity. Such data will yield
important insights about the formation, position and origin of comets,
and the similarities between cometary and interstellar material present
during the birth of the solar system.

The highest resolution mass spectrometer ever flown, ROSINA will
measure the isotopes Carbon 12 and Carbon 13, which differ by a single
neutron, and are used in carbon dating to determine the ages of organisms.
“The Carbon 12 to Carbon 13 ratio in a comet tells us about the
material that was present in the dense interstellar medium that formed
our Sun. Only comets have this information frozen within them,” said
Dr. Stephen Fuselier of Lockheed Martin’s ATC and U.S. lead
co-investigator for the ROSINA instrument.

“One of the mission’s most exciting pieces of information will come
from the ROSINA instrument,” said Alexander. “ROSINA will perform
carbon dating on the comet’s nucleus. One of the things that we don’t
know is whether comets were part of our solar system in the beginning.
Determining the age of this comet’s surface will help us to discover
their role in solar system formation and whether they brought particles
in from the outside.”

“ROSINA will also determine the metal content of the interstellar
medium that formed our Sun by using the Carbon 12 and 13, and carbon
monoxide and nitrogen ratios found inside comets,” said Fuselier. “If
it is very metal rich, we know our Sun is not a second generation star
because the Big Bang only created hydrogen and helium. By determining
the metalloids inside the comet, we can also deduce the size of the
star that created our Sun.”

The ATC is a unit of Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, which is
one of the major operating units of Lockheed Martin Corporation. Space
Systems designs, develops, tests, manufactures, and operates a variety
of advanced technology systems for military, civil and commercial
customers. Chief products include a full-range of space launch systems,
including heavy-lift capability, ground systems, remote sensing and
communications satellites for commercial and government customers,
advanced space observatories and interplanetary spacecraft, fleet
ballistic missiles and missile defense systems.

Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin employs about 130,000
people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design,
development, manufacture and integration of advanced technology
systems, products and services. The corporation reported 2003 sales of
$31.8 billion.

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NOTE TO EDITORS: High-resolution JPEG image files of Rosetta are
available at the following URL:
http://www.esa.int/export/esaSC/SEMJ09374OD_2_spk.html

For more information about Lockheed Martin Space Systems, see our web
site at http://lmms.external.lmco.com/