The “Rosetta” spacecraft has arrived at and orbited comet 67P – located more than 250 million miles away – bringing a 10-year journey across the solar system to an end.
The 2nd video above shows the celebration from the space operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany of the European Space Agency (ESA) after receiving a signal from their “Rosetta” spacecraft. One of the scientists leading this ESA venture described it as “the sexiest, most fantastic mission ever”.
The 3rd video shows a cool image of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken by Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on 3 August that looks like a face.
Operating on a tiny amount of solar energy alone, Rosetta spent 31 months in a deep space slumber, cruising out to a distance of nearly 800 million kilometres from the warmth of the Sun.
This brings forth the next stage in Rosetta’s decade-long journey through space, a historic rendezvous with a comet – named Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko – on 6 August 2014.
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