Rosetta flight director says Philae ready for release

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed a new method for detecting and measuring one of the most powerful, and most mysterious, events in the universe — a black hole being kicked out of its host galaxy and into intergalactic space at speeds as high as 5,000 kilometres per second (11 million miles per hour).

Scientists from Rosetta’s OSIRIS team have discovered an extraordinary formation in the Aker region on the larger lobe of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The largest of a group of three boulders with a diameter of approximately 30 metres appears to perch on the rim of a small depression. There seems to be only a very small contact area with the nucleus.

On the eve of Philae’s landing, the European Space Agency has released its top ten images of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko taken by Rosetta’s navigation camera from its lowest orbit just 10 kilometres from the centre of the nucleus.