Rosetta

By studying the logs of computer malfunctions caused by high-energy particles striking their circuitry, ESA scientists have used "housekeeping" data from the Rosetta and Mars Express deep-space probes to shed new light on cosmic rays in the solar system.

Phosphorus has been detected on a comet, thus completing the list of life-essential elements found on these cosmic snowballs. The discovery made in data from the Rosetta probe strengthens the idea that life’s ingredients were delivered to Earth by comets.

Scientists have discovered the second site at which ESA’s ill-fated Philae lander touched down on comet 67P, and in so doing revealed that the ancient ice hidden under the surface of the comet is softer than the froth on a cappuccino.

While comet flybys had been performed before, at the outset of the ESA’s Rosetta mission to the 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko nobody had ever entered orbit around a comet, let alone try to land on one.

Images returned by the Rosetta mission show dramatic evidence of collapsing cliffs and bouncing boulders on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Images sent back by ESA's Rosetta probe show that it wasn't only thing orbiting comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P/C-G). A comparison of images taken four years ago when the comet was closest to the Sun shows a piece of debris about 4 m (13 ft) in diameter circling 67P/C-G like a mini-moon.

The comet 46P/Wirtanen is set to make a close approach to Earth this weekend, and may even be bright enough to be seen by the naked eye. At its closest, 46P will pass a mere 7.2 million miles (11.7 million km) from our planet, making it the 10th closest comet encounter in the modern era.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has completed a massive publicly-available archive of almost 100,000 images and a mass of data collected over the course of the historic Rosetta mission.

​The ESA has some good news and bad news for extraterrestrial enthusiasts. The good news is that a molecule thought to be a biomarker for life has been found in a comet and around a young star. The bad news is that the molecule isn’t the clear indicator of life that it was once believed to be.

An all-star cast of spacecraft has teamed up from across the Solar System. After a CME erupted from the Sun in October 2014, its journey through space was tracked by Curiosity, Rosetta, Cassini, New Horizons and possibly even Voyager 2, allowing astronomers to study the phenomenon in detail.

Images taken by Rosetta's cameras as Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko passed closest to the Sun in 2015 show that the surface of the comet underwent dramatic changes as the terrain was resculpted by landslides and avalanches, revealing the pristine interior of the body.

It's been a busy year in space with new Mars missions launched, a NASA probe saying hello to Jupiter, and humanity's most ambitious comet exploration mission drawing to a close.