Houston, August 7: A European spacecraft has arrived at a comet more than 250 million miles away - bringing a 10-year journey across the solar system to an end. Since launching in March 2004, Rosetta has travelled more than four billion miles across the asteroid belt and more than five times the Earth's distance from the Sun. Rosetta has now entered orbit around the comet.
The comet is currently travelling round the sun at about 34,175 mph. The craft was launched in March 2004 and is set to complete the next phase of its mission on Wednesday afternoon - when it moves within just 62 miles of the comet at the same speed. Later in November it will deploy a small robotic lander, which will steer itself to the comet's surface, in order to send back images and conduct the first ever direct analysis of a comet's composition. The probe and its orbiter will study plumes of gas and water vapour that will boil off and trail behind as the comet nears the Sun. If the chemical signature of hydrogen matches that found in water on Earth, it could suggest that comets filled the oceans when they smashed into the planet billions of years ago.
A European spacecraft has arrived at a comet more than 250 million miles away - bringing a 10-year journey across the solar system to an end. Since launching in March 2004, Rosetta has travelled more than four billion miles across the asteroid belt and more than five times the Earth's distance from the Sun. Rosetta has now entered orbit around the comet. Report by Sarah Kerr.
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