February 7, 2016

Pictures of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken by the Rosetta space probe between August and November 2014 (Image ESA/Rosetta/NavCam – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0)

An article published in the journal “Nature” describes a research about the internal structure of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. A team of scientists, led by Martin Pätzold, from Rheinische Institut für Umweltforschung an der Universität zu Köln, Germany, analyzed data collected by ESA’s Rosetta space probe to provide some answers to the astronomers’ questions. According to their findings, the comet’s internal structure is quite homogeneous and contains no large caves. The total mass was estimated at nearly 10 billion tons.