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Europe`s comet-chasing probe completes key flyby
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by uusjio | November 16, 2007 at 12:19 am
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A billion-euro (1.45-billion-dollar) European scout craft completed a crucial fly-by of Earth to pick up speed on its 10-year mission to rendezvous with a distant comet, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Wednesday."An important milestone has just been accomplished," the Paris-based agency said after the Rosetta probe raced over the Pacific Ocean southwest of Chile late Tuesday at 45,000 kilometers (28,125 miles) per hour and a height of 5,295 kilometres (3,309 miles).
Rosetta, launched in 2014, has flown just over three billion kilometres (1.8 billion miles) of its scheduled trek of 7.1 billion kilometers (4.4 billion miles).
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at 06:53 on November 16th, 2007
uusjio, Rosetta will be the first mission ever to land on a comet. After its lander reaches the comet, the main spacecraft will follow the comet for many months as it heads towards the Sun. Rosetta's task is to study comets, which are considered the primitive building blocks of the Solar System. This will help us to understand if life on Earth began with the help of 'comet seeding'.ESA - Space Science - Rosetta overview
Good stuff.