Video: Mission control celebrates separation but anxiety builds over landing

Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft — six months into its research mission at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko — made its closest flyby of the comet’s boulder-strewn nucleus Saturday, capturing new photos and measurements to help scientists unravel how the duck-shaped body is evolving on its orbit around the sun.

For some comets, breaking up is not that hard to do. A new study indicates that the bodies of some periodic comets — objects that orbit the Sun in less than 200 years — may regularly split in two, then reunite down the road. This may be a repeating process fundamental to comet evolution.

Images of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from Rosetta’s navigation camera have taken on a darker, more “atmospheric” tone in recent days and the latest view is no exception.