The ESA's Rosetta spacecraft is still circling Comet 67P, preparing to make a landing. The ESA announced today that it would name the planned landing site Agilkia, after an island in the Nile River.
The name Agilkia continues with the naming scheme of the Rosetta mission. The mission is named after the Rosetta stone, the key to cracking ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Rosetta stone was discovered near the Nile Delta in 1799. The Philae lander was named after the obelisk which was used, in conjunction with the Rosetta stone, to crack the language of the hieroglyphs. Agilkia is the name of the island where the Philae obelisk was taken from.
The name Agilkia was suggested by over 150 people in a contest the ESA held to name the landing site, previously dubbed "Site J." The ESA awarded Alexandre Brouste of France as the winner of the contest, because his accompanying essay impressed them the most. The ESA opened this contest on October 16. The winner won the chance to watch the Philae landing in person from the ESA's mission control center in Germany.
The ESA ground team is preparing to land Rosetta's Philae robot on Agilkia in just over a week, on November 12. The landing site was chosen because it has the best combination of surfaces to land Philae on the comet. If the landing spot is too smooth, the robot might not be able to get a good grip on the surface, but if the spot is too bumpy, it might tip over and not be able to right itself.
If the Philae lander is successful, however, the ESA could make scientific history by being the first people to explore a moving comet from the surface of the comet itself. The Rosetta mission has already come closer to a moving comet than any man-made spacecraft has before.
Last month, the ESA released the dimensions of Comet 67P so that space enthusiasts could 3-D print their own model. The closer the Rosetta mission gets to the comet, the more dimensions the ESA will be able to fill in, and the more we will learn about this comet.
