Europe's Rosetta probe completes key fly-by of Earth

0 Comments | AFP, November, 2007

PARIS (AFP) — Europe's comet-chasing probe Rosetta has completed a crucial fly-by of Earth to pick up speed on a 10-year mission to rendezvous with a distant comet, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Wednesday.

"An important milestone has just been accomplished," the Paris-based agency said after the Rosetta probe raced over the Pacific Ocean southwest of Chile late Tuesday at 45,000 kilometers (28,125 miles) per hour and a height of 5,295 kilometres (3,309 miles).

The billion-euro (1.45-billion-dollar) probe, which was launched in March 2004, has flown just over three billion kilometres (1.8 billion miles) of its scheduled trek of 7.1 billion kilometers (4.4 billion miles).

It is due to meet up with Comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014, 675 million...