This Flying Space Rock Is Way Bigger Than Los Angeles

The European Space Agency is taking some well deserved victory laps over the success of Rosetta, a spacecraft that's spent the last two weeks doing loop-de-loops around a comet known as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. For the next 16 months, Rosetta will give Earthlings a close-up of this celestial body, even dropping a robotic lander called the Philae on its surface in November. This is a coup for the European Space Agency—and really, for all humankind.

Comets have always seemed like a Euro thing: After all, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince is the best sketch anyone had of a comet, right up until now. NASA lands things on much larger stuff all the time, but at 2.2-by-2.5 miles in size, comet 67P/C-G seems just the right size for a little prince. Admirers have even given 67P/C-G an adorable diminutive: the Rubber Ducky Comet.