A Kilometer High Cliff on Comet Churyumov Gerasimenko

A Kilometer High Cliff on Comet Churyumov – Gerasimenko

Image Credit &
Licence
(CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO):
ESA,
Rosetta spacecraft,
NAVCAM;
Additional Processing:
Stuart Atkinson

Explanation:
This kilometer high cliff occurs on the surface of a comet.

It was discovered on the dark nucleus of
Comet Churyumov – Gerasimenko (CG) by
Rosetta,
a robotic spacecraft
launched by
ESA,
which orbited the comet from 2014 to 2016.

The ragged cliff, as featured
here, was imaged by Rosetta early in its mission.

Although towering about one kilometer high, the low surface gravity of
Comet CG would likely make a
jump from the
cliffs by a human survivable.

At the foot of the cliffs is relatively smooth terrain dotted with
boulders as large as 20 meters across.

Data from
Rosetta indicates that the ice in
Comet CG has a significantly different
deuterium fraction —
and hence likely a different origin — than the water in Earth’s oceans.

The probe was named after the
Rosetta Stone, a rock slab featuring the
same text written in three different languages
that helped humanity
decipher ancient Egyptian writing.