Scientists have selected a landing site on the surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for the first-ever comet landing attempt in November.
Dubbed ‘Site J’, the spot where the Philae lander carried by the Rosetta spacecraft will attempt to touch down lies on the head of the comet. The location was chosen from five candidate sites as part of a complicated evaluation process, which forced the engineers to many trade-offs.
“As we have seen from recent close-up images, the comet is a beautiful but dramatic world – it is scientifically exciting, but its shape makes it operationally challenging,” said Stephan Ulamec, Philae lander manager at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR).
“None of the candidate landing sites met all of the operational criteria at the 100 per cent level, but Site J is clearly the best solution.”
Read the E&T news story about the Rosetta comet landing site in full online.
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