Every time I see a new image of the new image of the Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet, I just get lost searching through all the detail, marveling at the
variation of textures, and mostly watching in awe thinking about the
chain of events that took the spaceship Rosetta to where it is today, 500 million miles from Earth.
From NASA:
In the image, the comet's head (in the top half of the image) exhibits parallel linear features that resemble cliffs, and its neck displays scattered boulders on a relatively smooth, slumping surface. In comparison, the comet's body (lower half of the image) seems to exhibit a multi-variable terrain with peaks and valleys, and both smooth and rough topographic features.
Think
about the process to get to this point. First some humans decided to
build a little machine with some cameras, instrumentation, and a
daughter spacecraft. Then they put it on top of a rocket that launched
on March 2, 2004. After a few orbits, the probe used our planet's
gravity to reach Mars, then got back to Earth, then it kept
slingshotting from asteroid to asteroid to Earth in a precise, beautiful
cosmic game of billiards until it entered hibernation on June 8, 2011, en route to this comet.
On
January it woke up (a technological miracle on itself), positioned
itself to talk to its creators, started to take photos of its target,
and arrived to the comet at the beginning of this month, establishing an
orbit around it. And to top this amazing journey, it will send a lander
(A LANDER!) to its surface on November 11, 2014. All of this on its
own, thanks to the genius of a small team of really smart people.
Here's the 3D version of the image above:
