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Paris: 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.
The comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which scientists say may help unlock the mystery of the origins of life on Earth, came within 186 million kilometres (116 million miles) of our solar system's star at about 0200 GMT, the agency said.
"There are jets of gas and dust just about everywhere," he told AFP.
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The Sun's heat has fomented a burst of chemical reactions on the comet, which is spewing hundreds of kilos of gas and a tonne of dust per second.
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The comet is made up of minerals, ice and -- most critically for scientists -- organic molecules that may have been similar to the precursors that kick-started life in Earth's early oceans.
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If so, it will disgorge some of these pristine particles left from the solar system's birth some 4.6 billion years ago.
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As for Philae, the washing-machine-sized robot probe that tumbled onto the comet last November, scientists do not know yet whether it is still gathering data or if communications can be reestablished.
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