Rosetta Spacecraft

It was 3 a.m., and astronomer Maurizio Pajola had been up for hours looking through images taken by the Rosetta spacecraft of its dumpy, duck-shaped comet. Pajola had just started a new job studying Mars' moon Phobos at NASA's Ames Research Center. The only time he could continue this work on the Rosetta mission was the middle of the night.

A new image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was taken by the European Space Agencys (ESA) Rosetta spacecraft shortly before ending its remarkable 12-year journey with crash-landing on the comets surface on Friday.

The craft had been programmed for a "controlled impact", at a human walking pace of about 90cm per second.

Europe's pioneering Rosetta spacecraft concluded a 12-year odyssey with a controlled crash-landing Friday onto the comet it has orbited and probed for two years to unravel the secrets of the Solar System's birth, mission controllers said.

European scientists have sent the Rosetta spacecraft on its final, one-way journey to the surface of a comet, after a historic 12-year mission to discover the secrets of the dusty, icy bodies.

The agency released a photo of the washing machine-sized robot lab on the comet's rough surface.

Europe's Rosetta spacecraft has finally spotted its tiny lander Philae, thought to be lost forever, stuck in a ditch on the surface of a comet hurtling through space, ground controllers said Monday.

"The mission is coming to an end as a result of the spacecraft's ever-increasing distance from the Sun and Earth", said a statement by the ESA.

"We lost contact with the spacecraft on Saturday evening for nearly 24 hours," mission manager Patrick Martin said on ESA's Rosetta blog.

The craft made detections of glycine, used by living organisms to make proteins, in the cloud of gas and dust surrounding Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The elusive ice was detected, using data collected by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, on the bottom part of the main lobe of the dumbbell-shaped comet.

Researchers, including one of Indian-origin, have identified two large patches of water ice on the surface of comet 67P, perhaps the most studied comet in history.

NASA's first solar-powered spacecraft Juno to Jupiter has broken the record to become humanity's most distant solar-powered emissary.

A year ago on Thursday, the world held its collective breath as a European spacecraft dropped a tiny robot lab onto the surface of a comet hurtling towards the Sun.

A comet hosting the Philae robot and orbited by the Rosetta spacecraft zipped by past the Sun on Thursday with all systems go, The European Space Agency said.

It was 3 a.m., and astronomer Maurizio Pajola had been up for hours looking through images taken by the Rosetta spacecraft of its dumpy, duck-shaped comet. Pajola had just started a new job studying Mars' moon Phobos at NASA's Ames Research Center. The only time he could continue this work on the Rosetta mission was the middle of the night.

A new image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was taken by the European Space Agencys (ESA) Rosetta spacecraft shortly before ending its remarkable 12-year journey with crash-landing on the comets surface on Friday.

The craft had been programmed for a "controlled impact", at a human walking pace of about 90cm per second.

Europe's pioneering Rosetta spacecraft concluded a 12-year odyssey with a controlled crash-landing Friday onto the comet it has orbited and probed for two years to unravel the secrets of the Solar System's birth, mission controllers said.

European scientists have sent the Rosetta spacecraft on its final, one-way journey to the surface of a comet, after a historic 12-year mission to discover the secrets of the dusty, icy bodies.

The agency released a photo of the washing machine-sized robot lab on the comet's rough surface.

Europe's Rosetta spacecraft has finally spotted its tiny lander Philae, thought to be lost forever, stuck in a ditch on the surface of a comet hurtling through space, ground controllers said Monday.

"The mission is coming to an end as a result of the spacecraft's ever-increasing distance from the Sun and Earth", said a statement by the ESA.

"We lost contact with the spacecraft on Saturday evening for nearly 24 hours," mission manager Patrick Martin said on ESA's Rosetta blog.

The craft made detections of glycine, used by living organisms to make proteins, in the cloud of gas and dust surrounding Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The elusive ice was detected, using data collected by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, on the bottom part of the main lobe of the dumbbell-shaped comet.

Researchers, including one of Indian-origin, have identified two large patches of water ice on the surface of comet 67P, perhaps the most studied comet in history.

NASA's first solar-powered spacecraft Juno to Jupiter has broken the record to become humanity's most distant solar-powered emissary.

A year ago on Thursday, the world held its collective breath as a European spacecraft dropped a tiny robot lab onto the surface of a comet hurtling towards the Sun.

A comet hosting the Philae robot and orbited by the Rosetta spacecraft zipped by past the Sun on Thursday with all systems go, The European Space Agency said.