Goodbye, Rosetta

On September 30, the Rosetta spacecraft’s mission comes to an end. The ESA comet orbiter reached Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in August 2014 and a few months later sent the Philae lander to the surface—the first ever successful landing on a comet. Now that the comet has swung around the sun and is headed farther and farther away, Rosetta would be unable to collect enough power from its solar cells or communicate with Earth. This morning, mission control directed Rosetta to crash into the comet, and collected some incredible up-close observations from the spacecraft.