NAIF ID 1000012

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was discovered on Oct. 22, 1969 at Alma-Ata Observatory, Russia. Klim Ivanovic Churyumov found an image of this comet while examining a photographic plate of another comet (32P/Comas Solá) taken by Svetlana Ivanova Gerasimenko on 11 September 1969.  It has an irregular, bifurcated (contact-binary) shape with dimensions 4.1 km × 3.3 km × 1.8 km (large lobe) and 2.6 km × 2.3 km × 1.8 km (small lobe), with a rotation period of 12.4 hr.  It has an orbit semi-major axis distance of 3.4630 AU with eccentricity of 0.6410.  Churyumov–Gerasimenko was the destination of the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission, which rendezvoused with Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 6 August 2014 and entered orbit on 10 September 2014.  Rosetta's lander, Philae, landed on the comet's surface on 12 November 2014, becoming the first spacecraft to land on a comet nucleus.

67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

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