After traveling for over a decade through the solar system, the Rosetta spacecraft became the first in history to rendezvous with a comet, marking a big milestone in space exploration and a huge moment for European science.
Rosetta and the comet are now traveling 34,000 miles an hour, locked in a common orbit around the sun, approximately 405 million kilometers from Earth, according to the European Space Agency.
The comet's 6 ½ year-orbit will eventually take it beyond Jupiter, and Rosetta will accompany it for a year during that journey, according to an ESA press release.
The spacecraft will accomplish two other firsts: landing a probe on a comet's surface and then follow a comet around the sun.
"After 10 years, five months and four days traveling towards our destination, looping around the sun five times and clocking up 6.4 billion kilometers, we are delighted to announce finally, 'We are here,'" ESA's director general, Jean-Jacques Dordain, said in a statement. "Europe's Rosetta is now the first spacecraft in history to rendezvous with a comet, a major highlight in exploring our origins. Discoveries can start."
Scientists had to plan the 10-year trip in minute detail. Orbiting and landing on a comet is no easy task either. The comet is about 4 kilometers in diameter and oddly shaped.
The mission has cost €1.3 billion ($1.74 billion), including the launch, the spacecraft and the instruments on board. Workers from 14 European countries and the U.S. were involved in the industrial aspects of the mission.
This week's maneuver, which was accomplished by firing rocket thrusters on the spacecraft, brought Rosetta around 100 kilometers of its target.
"After the maneuver we'll be at a walking pace alongside the comet," said Matt Taylor, project scientist at ESA, according to the release.
At that point, the mothercraft will be in close orbit of the comet, approximately 30 kilometers above its surface.
This will allow an extraordinary view of how the comet changes as it approaches the intensity of the sun's radiation. Scientists expect it to develop a typical "coma," gaseous material boiled off the comet's icy nucleus, and two characteristic ion and dust tails.
"Arriving at the comet is really only just the beginning of an even bigger adventure, with greater challenges still to come as we learn how to operate in this unchartered environment, start to orbit and, eventually, land," said Sylvain Lodiot, ESA's Rosetta spacecraft operations manager, according to the release.
Up to five possible landing sites will be identified by late August, before the primary site is identified in mid-September. The researchers hope to release a small lander onto the icy nucleus sometime this November.
"After landing, Rosetta will continue to accompany the comet until its closest approach to the Sun in August 2015 and beyond, watching its behavior from close quarters to give us a unique insight and realtime experience of how a comet works as it hurtles around the Sun," said Taylor.
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