A First: Spacecraft Lands on Speeding Comet

The world is cheering a huge milestone in space exploration. The European Space Agency has landed the Philae probe with its tiny chemistry lab on a comet – 483 million kilometers away, hurtling 64,000 kilometers per hour. “For the last couple months, Rosetta has been studying the comet, surveying its surface and measuring the dust particles and gases around it,” reports Marcus Woo for Wired, describing how the spacecraft observed and then determined the best place for landing the probe. “Scientists are finding that [the comet] 67P, which stretches for about 2.5 miles at its widest, is expelling methane, ethanol, and sulfur, which might give it a rotten-egg-like stench.” Philae has no steering and will undergo a preprogrammed procedure that includes photographs and data collection from 10 instruments. Signals will be relayed to the spacecraft Rosetta and then forwarded back to Earth where they will inform space scientists on comet behavior and features for years to come. Philae's lifespan is uncertain as the comet approaches the sun, but Rosetta could continue collecting data for 17 more months. - YaleGlobal