Touchdown! Comet Landing to Offer Clues to Solar System's Birth
The landing of a European spacecraft on a craggy comet will provide a "quantum leap forward" for our understanding of the icy bodies.
Scientists "soft-landed" a space probe on a comet for the first time on Wednesday, capping a ten-year, four-billion-mile journey.
The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission sent a washing-machine-size probe named Philae to the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Despite a thruster failure on Wednesday, the three-legged, 220-pound (100-kilogram) probe set down successfully at 11:03 a.m. EST Wednesday. Two harpoons designed to attach Philae firmly to the rubber-duck-shaped comet failed at the last minute, but ESA scientists say there's no reason to believe at this point that Philae's mission has been compromised. The probe, they believe, is ready to begin what could be up to a year or more of intensive scrutiny of the comet's composition and structure.
"We have definitely confirmed that
