Space fans around the world are waiting excitedly for Wednesday of this week, when the ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft will attempt a first-ever soft landing of a robotic probe on a comet. The Philae (fee-LAY) lander is scheduled to touch down on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on November 12, 2014 at 10:35 a.m. EST (7:35 a.m PST/15:35 UTC). We on Earth – 300 million miles (500 million km) away – won’t know the lander has set down successfully until a signal is received back at about 11:02 a.m. EST (8:02 a.m. PST/16:02 UTC). If all goes as planned, it’ll be an awesome achievement, a feat described by Dutch astrophysicist Dr Fred Jansen – Rosetta’s mission manager – as trying to:
… do the equivalent of transferring an object from one speeding bullet to another.
The comet and Rosetta are flying through space at 60,000km an hour. In many, many aspects this is an absolute first.
The landing site – formerly known simply as Site J – now has an official name. It’s been given the name Agilkia, chosen after an ESA public essay competition. The name is in keeping with Rosetta’s Egyptian theme. The mission itself was named Rosetta after a stone slab inscribed with a decree issued in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V of Egypt. The decree the key to our modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs. The name Agilkia, meanwhile, refers to an island on the River Nile. Ancient buildings were relocated there after the island Philae flooded.
[via ESA]