ESA's Rosetta Spacecraft Spots 'Dust Veiled' Comet

The European spacecraft Rosetta is tracking a comet located far out in space near Jupiter's orbit that has recently developed a veil of dust.

Rosetta's scientific imaging system, OSIRIS, captured images of the comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko between March 27 and May 4. The European Space Agency (ESA) released those images Thursday, according to Space.com.

An ethereal, 800-mile-long (1,300 kilometers) cloud of dust, known as a coma, can be seen trailing the comet as it streaks across the sky.

"67P is beginning to look like a real comet," Holger Sierks of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany and principal investigator for OSIRIS, noted in a statement.

Launched in 2004, Rosetta is still 1.2 million miles (2 million km) from the comet, but in a few months it will be inside 67P's dusty cloud, riding in its wake as it makes its way to the inner reaches of the solar system.

This rendezvous offers scientists the opportunity to study dust production and structures within the coma at an early stage of the mission.

"It's hard to believe that only a few months from now, Rosetta will be deep inside this cloud of dust and en route to the origin of the comet's activity," Sierks commented.

A comet's dusty veil is created as it approaches the warm Sun, causing its icy surface to sublimate and its nucleus to release volatile gases laced with dust particles. The comet orbits the Sun every 6.5 years, and is currently 375 million miles (600 million km) away from the Sun.

The OSIRIS team was now also able to track the comet's brightness from Rosetta's images and determine that it rotates on its axis once every 12.4 hours, meaning its rotational period is 20 minutes shorter than initially thought.

The 6,600-pound Rosetta spacecraft, which looks like an aluminum box, is set to arrive at the comet in August. It will also land a robotic probe known as Philae on the comet's surface in November, Space.com reported, the first probe ever to land on a comet if all goes well.