Spacecraft reaches comet for first up-close study

WORLD SCIENCE

The comet on Aug. 3. PHOTO/ESA

A Eu­ro­pe­an Space Agen­cy space­craft has be­come the first to reach a com­et for a close-up view, com­ing with­in 100 km (60 miles) on Aug. 6 and pre­par­ing for an even clos­er ap­proach, sci­en­tists re­port.

The event fol­lows a decade-long jour­ney. “After ten years, five months and four days trav­el­ling to­wards our des­tina­t­ion, loop­ing around the Sun five times and clock­ing up 6.4 bil­lion kilo­me­tres, we are de­light­ed to an­nounce fi­nally ‘we are here,’” said Jean-Jacques Dor­dain, the agen­cy’s di­rec­tor gen­er­al, on Aug. 6.

“Ro­set­ta is now the first space­craft in his­to­ry to ren­dez­vous with a com­et, a ma­jor high­light in ex­plor­ing our ori­gins. Dis­cov­er­ies can start.” Mis­sion sci­en­tists plan to di­rect the craft clos­er over the next six weeks, put­ting it with­in half its cur­rent dis­tance. Lat­er plans in­clude hav­ing it de­pos­it a lan­der di­rectly on the com­et.

Com­et 67P/Chur­yu­mov-Ge­ra­si­men­ko and Ro­set­ta now lie 405 mil­lion km (250 mil­lion miles) from Earth, about half way be­tween the or­bits of Ju­pi­ter and Mars, rush­ing to­wards the in­ner So­lar Sys­tem at nearly 55,000 km (34,000 miles) per hour.

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