Monolithic SiC telescope of the OSIRIS Narrow-Angle Camera for the cometary mission ROSETTA

The international Rosetta mission, now planned by ESA to be launched in January 2003, will provide a unique opportunity to directly study the nucleus of comet 46P/Wirtanen and its activity from a heliocentric distance of 3.2 AU to the perihelion passage at 1.06 AU in July 2013. We describe here the design, the development and the performances of the telescope of the Narrow Angle Camera of the OSIRIS experiment which will give high resolution images of the cometary nucleus in the visible spectrum.