At 10.00 GMT on 20 January 2014, out in deep space near Jupiter, an alarm will go off. This will be the signal to rouse the Astrium-built comet-chasing spacecraft Rosetta from the deep sleep it has been in for the previous 31 months.
Rosetta was launched in March 2004 on a mission to rendez-vous with Comet 67P/Churymov-Gerasimenko, a ball of ice and dust that – scientists believe – preserves material from the formation of the solar system.
Around 800 million kilometres away from Earth when she will wake up, Rosetta is still about 9 million km from her destination comet, which she is scheduled to reach in summer 2014.
Source / Author: Astrium