juliensimon/esa-rosetta-observations

ESA Rosetta Mission Observations

Part of the Planetary Science Datasets collection on Hugging Face.

The complete observation metadata catalog from ESA's Rosetta mission — 8,280,210 individual instrument observations spanning the entire mission from launch (2004) through end of mission at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (2016).

Dataset description

Rosetta was ESA's cornerstone mission to study comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko up close. Launched in March 2004, it entered orbit around 67P in August 2014 and deployed the Philae lander in November 2014. The mission ended with a controlled descent onto the comet surface on 30 September 2016. Rosetta carried 11 orbiter instruments and 10 lander instruments, generating an enormous archive of observations covering the comet nucleus, coma, solar wind interaction, dust environment, and surface composition.

This dataset contains the full EPN-TAP metadata for every Rosetta observation in the ESA Planetary Science Archive, including observation times, target information, spatial coverage, instrument parameters, and data product access URLs.

Comets are among the most primitive objects in the solar system, preserving volatile ices and organic molecules largely unchanged since the formation of the protoplanetary disk 4.6 billion years ago. Rosetta's unprecedented two-year close escort of comet 67P revealed a bilobed nucleus approximately 4 km across, with a bulk density of only 0.533 g/cm3 — indicating high porosity and a composition dominated by water ice, dust, and organic material. ROSINA mass spectrometer measurements detected molecular oxygen, glycine (the simplest amino acid), and phosphorus in the coma, establishing that comets carry the fundamental building blocks of biochemistry. The deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio measured in 67P's water was significantly higher than Earth's ocean water, complicating the hypothesis that comets delivered the bulk of Earth's water.

The Philae lander's bouncing touchdown on the nucleus surface provided the first direct measurements of a comet's mechanical and electrical properties, revealing a surprisingly hard surface layer beneath a few centimeters of dust. OSIRIS camera observations tracked the evolution of surface features as the comet approached perihelion, documenting cliff collapses, expanding fractures, and the formation of circular pits through sublimation-driven erosion. The activity pattern was highly heterogeneous, with jets concentrated in the neck region between the two lobes and strongly modulated by solar illumination geometry and local topography.

The breadth of Rosetta's instrument suite makes this observation catalog a unique resource for multi-disciplinary cometary science. Cross-correlating ROSINA gas measurements with OSIRIS imaging, VIRTIS infrared spectroscopy, and GIADA dust flux data enables studies of the coupling between nucleus outgassing, dust emission, and coma chemistry that were previously impossible. The catalog also covers Rosetta's flybys of asteroids 2867 Steins (2008) and 21 Lutetia (2010), adding small-body characterization data to the archive.

Quick stats

• 8,280,210 total observations
• 84 instruments
• 14 distinct targets

Top instruments

• ROSINA: 4,654,393
• OSIRIS: 2,352,819
• RPC: 322,145
• ALICE: 258,704
• RSI: 257,600

Top targets

• 67P: 7,785,762
• 9P: 48,380
• Steins: 37,543
• Lutetia: 33,662
• Earth: 17,622

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/esa-rosetta-observations", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Observations per instrument
print(df["instrument_name"].value_counts())

# OSIRIS camera observations of 67P
osiris = df[(df["instrument_name"] == "OSIRIS") & (df["target_name"].str.contains("67P", na=False))]
print(f"{len(osiris):,} OSIRIS observations of 67P")

# Timeline: observations per month (using Julian Date time_min)
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
valid = df[df["time_min"].notna()].copy()
valid["year"] = ((valid["time_min"] - 2451545.0) / 365.25 + 2000).astype(int)
valid.groupby("year").size().plot(kind="bar")
plt.xlabel("Year")
plt.ylabel("Observations")
plt.title("Rosetta Observations per Year")

Data source

ESA Planetary Science Archive — EPN-TAP service. Query: SELECT * FROM epn_core WHERE instrument_host_name = 'Rosetta'

Related datasets

• lunar-craters-robbins -- Lunar impact craters
• mars-craters-robbins -- Mars impact craters

Pipeline

Source code: juliensimon/space-datasets

Support

If you find this dataset useful, please give it a ❤️ on the dataset page and share feedback in the Community tab! Also consider giving a ⭐️ to the space-datasets repo.

Citation

@dataset{esa_rosetta_observations,
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  title = {ESA Rosetta Mission Observations},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/esa-rosetta-observations},
  note = {Based on ESA Planetary Science Archive EPN-TAP metadata}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0