DARMSTADT, Aug 9 — After a decade-long journey, the European Space Agency’s €1 billion (RM4.3 billion) Rosetta space probe entered the orbit of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Wednesday, August 6, and is now some 100 kilometres away from the comet.
The spacecraft has released new photographs revealing that the comet’s shape is vastly different from what scientists had previously believed, according to a Space.com report.
The strangely-shaped 4 kilometre-wide comet has an uneven appearance and is not shaped like rugby ball as had been assumed. Scientists now believe it to be either made up of two formerly distinct objects or to have been heavily eroded over time.
New findings have also revealed that the comet, which takes about 6.5 years to complete a single orbit around the sun, is losing the equivalent of two small glasses of water every second. At this rate, it would fill an Olympic-size swimming pool in about 100 days.
The probe is expected to move closer to the comet in November, when mission controllers will attempt deploy a lander named Philae that will anchor to 67P’s surface with a harpoon.
Once anchored to 67P’s surface, the lander will gather data to study how the comet changes as it nears the sun.
The ESA launched Rosetta, which awoke from a 31 month-long hibernation in January, in 2004 in order to gain a better understanding of the origins of life on Earth through the study of comets. — Reuters
