After weeks spent scrutinizing an asteroid, scientists say they will soon announce their chosen landing spot where a European mission will put down a lander on the space rock's craggy surface.
On Sept. 14 scientists at the European Space Agency will announce their chosen target for the lander dubbed Philae, currently being carried on the comet-hunting spacecraft Rosetta spacecraft riding through space next to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
The landing, the first attempted soft landing on an asteroid, is set for Nov. 11, the ESA said.
Scientists have been studying both sides of the asteroid, with its misshapen outline reminding some researchers of a rubber duck, to narrow down the possible landing sites to five final candidates.
Most of the candidate sites are on the smaller of the asteroid's distinct double lobes that give it a shape that has a number of scientists suggesting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko actually started out as two separate asteroids that came together to fuse into one.
Meanwhile, a NASA instrument aboard Rosetta has returned its first scientific data from its examination of the comet.
The instrument dubbed Alice has spent the last month mapping the surface of the comet in the far-ultraviolet wavelengths, finding it unusually dark at those wavelengths, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., reported.
It also detected oxygen and hydrogen in the 67P's coma, or atmosphere, but saw no sign of expected water-ice areas on its surface.
"We're a bit surprised at just how unreflective the comet's surface is and how little evidence of exposed water-ice it shows," said Alan Stern, Alice principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.
Alice is designed to gather high-resolution data on the comet 67P impossible to obtain with Earth-orbiting or ground-based instruments.
The ESA's Philae lander, once it sets down on the asteroid's surface, will spend several weeks conducting scientific research.
Philae will not so much land as it will be harpooned into the space rock's surface, to anchor it sufficiently to avoid driving away in the extremely low gravity of the 2.5-mile-long asteroid.
Rosetta has spent 10 years on its voyage to the asteroid, traveling almost 4 billion miles before rendezvousing with 67P.
During that time it was given gravity assists during three flybys of Earth and another as it passed Mars, and spent almost 3 years in an almost inactive hibernation state before being reawakened in January in preparation for its arrival at the comet.
Scientists hope the comet will reveal clues to the origins and evolution of the solar system, as well as the part comets may have had in seeding the early earth with water, or perhaps even with the early building blocks of life.
