Rosetta's Comet Wakes Up

Far across the solar system, the Rosetta spacecraft is on its way to rendezvous with the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It'll arrive this summer and start mapping the ice ball in detail, and then, in November, it will send a probe (called Philae) to actually land on the comet's surface! Right now, though, the European Space Agency probe is still a few million kilometers from the comet. It's busily snapping photos to examine the comet's behavior as well as get more accurate positions for it on ...