Humans Just Got Our First Close-Up Look At A Comet And It's Mind-Blowing
Ten years ago the European Space Agency launched Rosetta, a first-of-its-kind spacecraft on a mission to meet a comet.
That comet? 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
It finally accomplished that goal earlier this month - getting into the comet's orbit. But she's not done yet.
This November Rosetta will deploy a small probe that, if successful, will land on the comet - the first time we've ever made contact with a space rock (intentionally).
Before Rosetta, we knew comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as just a speck of light - as we do most comets. It's hard to really see what a comet is like because they're extremely small. Here's what the comet looks like from Earth:
ESA
ESA
The left half of the image is a profile of the comet's body and the right half is the back of the comet's head, near to where Rosetta's probe will land.
esa
ESA
ESA
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