Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2014

5 SMALL BODIES SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2014 It took 10 and half years and 6.4 billion kilometres, but in the end the ESA's Rosetta spacecraft has reached its final destination, the comet 67P/Churyumov- Gerasimenko. Now astronomers will have the opportunity to learn about the chem- ical and physical conditions of the pri- mordial cloud from which our solar sys- tem and the life that populates it formed. lly catches Gerasimenko A fter a deep-space hibernation pe- riod lasted 957 days, on 20 January 2014 the interplanetary probe Ro- setta was re-awakened to continue its long mission, began on 2 March 2004 with its launch on board an Ariane 5 rocket from the spaceport of Kourou (French Guiana) of the European Space Agency (ESA). The mission (costing close to $2 billion) should have started several months earlier, in January 2003, but a technical hitch with the carrier rocket forced ESA to postpone its launch, thus completely disrupting the flight plans which had as their initial main