ESA Creates First Map of Target Comet for Rosetta Landing Mission

The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission is moving forward and now, scientists have managed to map the surface of the comet that's the target for the new mission. The new findings show researchers a bit more about comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which could aid further discoveries.

The Rosetta mission aims to rendezvous with a comet, escort it as it orbits the sun and then deploy a lander to its surface. Before it deploys the lander, though, Rosetta needs to learn a bit more about the surface of the comet it's deploying to.

ESA's Rosetta spacecraft actually arrived at its destination about a month ago. Currently, Rosetta is accompanying the comet as it progresses on its route toward the inner solar system, gathering information about the comet as it does so. Already, its scientific imaging system, OSIRIS, has captured images of the comet's distinctive physical appearance.

"Never before have we seen a cometary surface in such detail," said Holger Sierks, OSIRIS principal investigator, in a news release. "It is a historic moment-we have an unprecedented resolution to map a comet."

The comet itself is dominated by cliffs, depressions, craters, boulders and even parallel groves. These features largely seem to be shaped by the comet's activity, in which grains emitted from below the surface fall back to the ground in the nearby area. Now, all can be seen on the latest map of the cometary surface.

As the comet and Rosetta travel closer to the sun over the next few months, OSIRIS will continue to monitor the surface in order to look for changes. Even subtle activity could help explain how cometary activity created the comet's features in the first place.

"The first map is, of course, only the beginning of our work," said Sierks. "At this point, nobody truly understands how the surface variations we are currently witnessing came to be."

Want to learn more about the mission? Check it out here.