Space fans, get your telescopes ready.
Tonight the Rosetta spacecraft will make a flyby of Earth on its way to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Space watchers should be able to see the "comet chaser" with telescopes or binoculars if the sky is clear.
Rosetta, launched by the European Space Agency in February 2004, will reach the comet in 2014 and deliver a lander, Philae, to the surface. It is to be the first mission ever to orbit and land on a comet.
With the mission, scientists hope to learn not only how comets work but also about the evolution of our solar system.
Comets are composed of ice, gas, and dust—primitive debris from the formation of our solar system about 4.5 billion years ago. Many scientists also believe comets are the source of most of the water and organic material that was long ago delivered to some planets.
"By looking back into the infancy of the solar system … at the material out of which planets formed … [we can] study some of the pieces of the puzzle that we try to put together to understand how life formed on Earth," said Gerhard Schwehm, project scientist for the Rosetta mission.
Slingshot Effect
Rosetta is approaching Earth from an area in space between the constellations Leo and Sextans. The spacecraft will make its closest approach to Earth tonight (March 4) at about 11:10 p.m. central European time (5:10 p.m. ET), when it will come within 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) of Earth, passing over Mexico.
After sunset in Europe, the spacecraft will appear to travel from southeast to southwest, moving from the constellation Sextans toward the setting sun, crossing the sky, according to the ESA's Rosetta Web site.
It will be visible almost all night from the Northern Hemisphere and most of the Southern Hemisphere.
The flyby maneuver will swing the spacecraft around our planet and out toward Mars. It is the first of four planet flybys (three times with Earth, once with Mars) that Rosetta will carry out in its long journey to the comet.
This type of flyby is used to accelerate spacecraft, using the gravity of a planet, in this case Earth, to gain orbital velocity.
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