The European Space Agency's Rosetta space craft is just days away from attempting to carry out the first ever landing by a probe onto a comet.
And in the meantime it's sending back some pictures of the landing sites which are, frankly, astonishing.
The detail and clarity of these pictures is remarkable. Almost as remarkable, in fact, as the realistic possibility that we're going to land on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Four-image mosaic comprising images taken by Rosetta's navigation camera from a distance of 9.8 km from the centre of comet 67P/C-G – about 7.8 km from the surface. The corresponding image scale is about 66 cm/pixel, and the mosaic covers roughly 1200 x 1350 metres.
This is another mosaic:
"Four-image montage comprises images taken by Rosetta's navigation camera from a distance of 9.8 km from the centre of comet 67P/C-G – about 7.8 km from the surface. The corresponding image scale is about 66 cm/pixel, so each 1024 x 1024 pixel frame is about 676 m across. In this orientation the larger lobe occupies the upper frames, with the neck filling the lower frames. The smaller lobe of the comet is out of view towards the right."
