Rosetta mission scientist Matt Taylor says the science team is jubilant after the Philae lander captured the historic, first close up images of the surface of a comet and began returning data from its science instruments.
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Astronomers capture best view ever of disintegrating comet
The sharpest, most detailed observations of a comet breaking apart have been captured with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The images suggest that the roughly 4.5-billion-year-old comet, named 332P/Ikeya-Murakami, may be spinning so fast that material is ejected from its surface. The resulting debris is now scattered along a 3,000-mile-long trail.
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Comet Hitchhiker would take tour of small solar-system bodies
A concept called Comet Hitchhiker, developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, puts forth a new way to get into orbit and land on comets and asteroids, using the kinetic energy — the energy of motion — of these small bodies. Masahiro Ono, the principal investigator based at JPL, had Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” in mind when dreaming up the idea.