Rosetta probe advanced our knowledge of solar system, now will spend eternity with comet

DARMSTADT, GERMANY – Europe's Rosetta spacecraft, due to switch off Friday after a 12-year odyssey, carried 11 scientific instruments to sniff and photograph a comet from all angles. After arriving in orbit around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, it launched Philae, a separate lander, which itself had 10 high-tech gadgets, including cameras, X-ray scans, radio wave probes and a drill that never deployed. Together, the robot explorers have advanced our understanding of comets -- of which there are billions -- believed to be leftovers from the birth of our solar system some 4.6 billion years ago. "Nobody had any idea comets can be so weird until Rosetta got there," said Fabio Favata of the European Space Agency's (ESA) robotic exploration directorate. Expecting to encounter something roughly the shape of an American football, scientists were flabbergasted to observe through Rosetta's cameras that 67P resembled a rubber bath duck with a distinct "body" and "head," and a crack through its "neck."