European Space Agency Lands On Comet! In addition to covering late breaking news, Pete will be taking listener calls at (218) 862-9829. Listeners may also listen free to our stream 24/7 at (712) 432-7848 (Reuters) - The European Space Agency (ESA) landed a probe on a comet on Wednesday, a first in space exploration and the climax of a decade-long mission to get samples from what are the remnants of the birth of Earths solar system. The box-shaped 100-kg (220-pound) lander, named Philae, touched down on schedule at about 1100 ET after a seven-hour descent from spacecraft Rosetta around half a billion kilometers (300 million miles) from Earth. Scientists hope that samples from the surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will help show how planets and life are created as the rock and ice that make up the comet preserve organic molecules like a time-capsule. Comets come from the formation of Earths 4.6-billion-year-old solar system. Scientists believe they may have brought much of the water in Earths oceans. We are ready to make science fiction a science fact, ESA director of human spaceflight and operations, Thomas Reiter, said at the European Space Operations Center in Germany before the landing. Rosetta reached the comet, a roughly 3-by-5 km rock discovered in 1969, in August after a journey of 6.4 billion km that took 10 years, five months and four days - a mission that cost close to 1.4 billion euros ($1.8 billion).
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 17:59:15 +0000
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