Space probe on course to reach comet after 10 years

A European spacecraft is due to rendezvous with an icy comet today after an epic 10-year journey across the Solar System.

Launched in March 2004, the Rosetta probe’s odyssey has already taken it four billion miles across the asteroid belt and more than five times the Earth’s distance from the Sun.

It is now closing in on its quarry, comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a lump of ice and dust swinging in a wide circuit round the Sun at around 34,175 mph.