Do you remember comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko? It was the target of the ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft, which visited and ultimately crash landed into the comet in its previous passage close to the Sun in 2014-2016. Rosetta made history as being the first spacecraft to ever orbit and land (with Philae) on a Read more…
Article Written by Gavin Ramsay Comets have been known for millennia with Halley’s Comet famously being shown in the Bayeux Tapestry illustrating events which took place in 1066. They were also thought to foretell catastrophic events. Today we know them as having a small nucleus made up of ice and Read more…
Comets are small icy and rocky objects flying around our Solar System on elliptical orbits, as opposed to near-circular ones the planets are enjoying. They are strange and fantastic enough as it is: bright comets with their tails spanning across the sky have been marvelled at, recorded, and often feared Read more…
During our school days, children in the developing and developed world could not even dream about getting a chance to look through a professional telescope; forget about playing with it for real observations! Those days, only the best professional astronomers/astrophysicists had access to such telescopic sites and networks. However one Read more…
One of the European Space Agency’s flagship missions reached its grand finale on Friday 30 September 2016. After 20 years in development, a 10-year trip around the Solar System and two years on station at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the Rosetta mission drew to a close at 12:19 BST when the spacecraft Read more…
In November 2014, the European Space Agency’s washing-machine-sized investigation and analysis lander lab Philae, did something that no other automated probe had ever done before, it successfully landed on a comet. But apart from this monumental achievement what has the lander probe and its Rosetta mothership so far learned about Read more…
On 2March 2004 the European Space Agency (ESA) launched an ambitious and exciting robotic explorer into space, and you probably have heard its quite pretty name mentioned a lot lately. It is the trailblazing Rosetta spacecraft and it has been given a task that has seen many before attempt and Read more…
Comets are frozen lumps of ice (often called volatiles) and rock that come from distant parts of our Solar System. As they move closer and around the Sun, the frozen materials start to melt and this causes a tail to form. The spectacular sight of a visible comet without the Read more…