Photo: Christopher Becke
If you watch the news, you might have heard that mankind achieved yet another milestone regarding space exploration - we landed a spacecraft on a moving comet. The story from the Armageddon movie just got a bit more feasible now, didn’t it?
After about 20 years of planning ahead and a humongous distance traveled through the void of space, on November 12th, 2014, at 1600 GMT, the Philae probe reestablished communication with the European Space Agency (ESA) mission control, sending info about its harboring to the low-gravity comet after it's believed to have bounced a couple of times at first attempt.
Since the Rosetta spacecraft and its Philae lander’s launch in 2004, the two have traveled a massive 6 billion kilometers to catch up with the comet, tether with it and send us information about their kind.
Yes, it’s hard to imagine how 6 billion kilometers look like, but at least we can show you how big comet 67P is, thanks to these renderings made by Christopher Becke.
Some of these pictures scale the ginormous rock against some of our planet’s landmarks, such as the Manhattan city, Washington DC, Sand Francisco, our tallest buildings or the Gibraltar, while some take it to the Sci-fi side and compare it with Star Trek ships, the Borg Cube, the Federation Space Dock, Star War’s Death Star II and even the asteroid space slug.
Look closely and you’ll also find an Easter egg in one of the graphs, in the shape of humanity’s most feared reptile.
Since the Rosetta spacecraft and its Philae lander’s launch in 2004, the two have traveled a massive 6 billion kilometers to catch up with the comet, tether with it and send us information about their kind.
Yes, it’s hard to imagine how 6 billion kilometers look like, but at least we can show you how big comet 67P is, thanks to these renderings made by Christopher Becke.
Some of these pictures scale the ginormous rock against some of our planet’s landmarks, such as the Manhattan city, Washington DC, Sand Francisco, our tallest buildings or the Gibraltar, while some take it to the Sci-fi side and compare it with Star Trek ships, the Borg Cube, the Federation Space Dock, Star War’s Death Star II and even the asteroid space slug.
Look closely and you’ll also find an Easter egg in one of the graphs, in the shape of humanity’s most feared reptile.
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