Rosetta team opts to land probe on ‘head’ of comet

A team of scientists identified yesterday the point on the surface of a comet — known as Site J — where they aim to land a probe in what would be a historic breakthrough for their decade-long project.

The probe or lander will be dispatched from the Rosetta spacecraft, which was launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2004 and has been tracking comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on its trip around the sun.

Scientists hope data gathered by the landers on the surface of the comet will allow them to peek into a kind of astronomical time capsule, offering clues about what the world looked like when our solar system was born. The lander will drill more than 20cm into the comet’s surface to collect samples for analysis.