This mosaic of images from the navigation camera on the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft shows the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it appeared at 5 a.m. UTC on Dec. 17, 2014 (9 p.m. PST on Dec. 16).
Rosetta is a European Space Agency mission with contributions from its member states and NASA. Rosetta’s Philae lander is provided by a consortium led by the German Aerospace Center, Cologne; Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen; French National Space Agency, Paris; and the Italian Space Agency, Rome. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the U.S. participation in the Rosetta mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information on the U.S. instruments aboard Rosetta, visit: http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov . For more information about Rosetta, visit http://www.esa.int/rosetta .
Image Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM
