Rosetta Makes Rendezvous With Comet

The day that the European Space Agency has been waiting for has finally arrived. Their space craft Rosetta has finally made rendezvous with the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after 10 years, five months and four days. In this process the space craft has gone round the sun five times and traveled 6.4 billion km.

Rosetta was launched on 2 March 2004 and is carrying a lander called Philae which it will drop down on to the comet’s surface in the month of Novemenber. The space craft is currently 550m km away from the Earth and a message from the Rosetta takes 22 minutes to reach the scientists on Earth.

The ten year chase to map the surface of the comet is now coming to its actual purpose. This is the first time that a comet has been studied in such detail. The comet orbits the sun every six and a half years and travels between the orbits of Earth and Jupiter. It is nearly 4 km wide and is minus seventy degree Celsius. This is a much warmer temperature than what the researchers expected.

More secrets from the comet’s surface will certainly be revealed when Philae lands and takes samples from its surface. We will wait and watch the results of this science project with baited breath. Rosetta will follow the elliptical orbit of the comet for nearly a year.