it's a cool idea, but i'm not sure how you land on something the size of london's heathrow airport that is several light minutes away. obviously gravity can't help much, which (in my mind) leaves some mad piloting skills! how do they plan to find within a few meters where this thing is, much less land on it?

don't get me wrong, i love the idea. just not sure how it can work...

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/0....ap/index.html

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None to speak of

It similar to the landing of Near/Shoemaker on Eros some time ago. Both comet and probe will be in the same orbit, so relative velocity will be vary slow. The rendezvous is tricky, but I guess the landing is merely a matter of patience.

The picture on CNN is not Rosetta. Check out
http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Rosetta/index.html


Harald

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

NEAR descent images:

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary...s_descent.html

NEAR project home page
http://near.jhuapl.edu/

Orbital images and more links
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary...near_eros.html

This was a wonderful mission, not sure it got as much publicity as it deserved.