Rosetta's Historic Comet Chase: All Your Questions, Answered

The idea of catching up to a comet, landing on it and drilling for samples sounds like it could be the plot for Armageddon 3. But the news comes directly from the European Space Agency and NASA: Earlier this week, the agencies woke the unmanned Rosetta spacecraft after a two-and-a-half-year nap and are preparing it for a rendezvous with a comet later this year.

So far, the mission, which launched a decade ago (after more than a decade of preparation), is going smoothly. According to NASA, the first communication from the spacecraft arrived at the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, at 7:18 p.m. local time (1:18 p.m. ET). The signal was received by a ground station at the Goldstone, Calif., complex of NASA's Deep Space Network. Read more...