14 DAY TRIAL // Just days ago, the European Space Agency (better known as ESA) released a cool space photo that soon enough turned into a viral sensation. The photo, available next to this article, is basically a selfie taken by the Rosetta spacecraft.
What makes this picture super awesome is the fact that the spacecraft is not alone in it. Thus, comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko is visible in the background. Apparently, Rosetta and the space rock were just 50 kilometers (31 miles) away from each other at the time the photo was taken.
“The image was taken on 7 September from a distance of about 50 km from the comet, and captures the side of the Rosetta spacecraft and one of Rosetta’s 14 m-long [46 foot-long] solar wings, with 67P/C-G in the background.”
“Two images with different exposure times were combined to bring out the faint details in this very high contrast situation,” the European Space Agency writes in the photo's description on its website.
For those unaware, it was earlier this year, on August 6, that Rosetta officially became the first spacecraft ever to orbit a comet. Rosetta left our planet in March 2004, and traveled over a distance of more than 6 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) to reach 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
The spacecraft and the comet are now floating about in space at a distance of about 405 million kilometers (over 251 million miles) away from our planet. Come November, Rosetta is to try and deploy a lander on the space rock.