I am truly impressed by the feats of science especially the engineers who are pulling off this cosmic rendezvous.
Last night a spacecraft flew past Earth at 28,000 mph on its way to land on an icy comet seven years from now. Rosetta is a spacecraft launched by the European Space agency in 2004 to intercept 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Last night it took incredible photos of the moon and Earth. These images are just a bonus to the real mission of collecting a wealth of data about comets and helping to answer how our Solar System evolved and give clues to evolution. This photo shows sun's limb peaking over Anartica.
This was the second flyby Earth. In order to reach its destination the spacecraft will pass by Earth once more in November of 2009. It takes three passes in order to be catapulted towards the outer Solar System. Every pass builds up a boost of energy from the Earth’s gravity so it can eventually match the speed of the comet by November of 2014.
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