The Rosetta mission, which recently made the first ever landing on a comet, has revealed remarkable details about the object's surface features.
Researchers on the mission released a number of their initial results from Comet 67P/Churyumo, the European Space Agency reported.
The scientists have measured a number of the comet's vital statistics. The small lobe of the object measures at 2.6 by 2.3 by 1.8 kilometers and the large lobe was measured at 4.1 by 3.3 by 1.8 km. It is is believed to have a mass of about 10 billion tons and a total porosity of between 70 and 80 percent with an interior structure composed of weakly bonded ice-dust clumps.
The OSIRIS scientific camera imaged about 70 percent of the comet's surface, but is yet to reach its southern hemisphere. They have identified 19 regions separated by boundaries that have been named after Egyptian deities following on the theme of the mission.
The team has pinpointed five basic categories of terrain type on Comet 67P/Churyumo, "dust-covered; brittle materials with pits and circular structures; large-scale depressions; smooth terrains; and exposed more consolidated ('rock-like') surfaces."
The majority of the northern hemisphere was found to be covered in dust, and as the comet heats the ice transforms directly into gas which escapes and forms the comets atmosphere. This dust is dragged along within the gas, and particles that do not reach a high enough speed to overcome the object's gravity fall back to its surface.
The gases that escape from the comet's surface are believed to help transport dust across its surface, producing "dune-like ripples, and boulders with 'wind-tails," the researchers reported.
The groundbreaking mission has also identified jets of activity rising from pits and the smooth region of the comet.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Science.
