European Space Agency's Rosetta probe becomes first spacecraft to orbit a comet

“Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and Rosetta now lie 405 million kilometres from Earth, about half way between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, rushing towards the inner Solar System at nearly 55 000 kilometres per hour.”

“At about seven o’clock this morning, after more than ten years of travel, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe went into orbit around a comet named 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which is currently about two hundred and fifty million miles from Earth,” reports Michael Lemonick in the New Yorker. “No spacecraft has ever orbited a comet before,” Matt Taylor, the Rosetta mission’s lead scientist, told the New Yorker a few months ago.

“After ten years, five months and four days travelling towards our destination, looping around the Sun five times and clocking up 6.4 billion kilometres, we are delighted to announce finally ‘we are here’,” says Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA’s Director General.

Here is the official statement from ESA.

Over at CNN, there’s video.