Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosetta spacecraft is cruising toward comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Just issues images taken by the probe reveal that its comet prey has an irregular shape.

A set of three images were taken July 4 by OSIRIS, Rosetta’s onboard scientific imaging system. The images were obtained from a distance of approximately 23,000 miles (37,000 kilometers).

The tiny world seems to display three prominent structures.

Irregular body

“From what we can discern in these early images, 67P is an irregularly looking body”, says OSIRIS Principal Investigator, Holger Sierks, from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany in a press statement.

The images look like three large structures or a deep depression.

Irregular, elongated, and structured shapes are not uncommon for small bodies such as asteroids and comets.

Escort service

Rosetta — an ESA mission with contributions from its member states and NASA — will be the first mission in history to rendezvous with a comet, escort it as it orbits the Sun, and deploy the Philae lander to its surface.

Rosetta launched in March 2004 by an Ariane-5 G+ from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Now over 10 years in space, the spacecraft must still perform a number of rendezvous maneuvers to ensure that Rosetta arrives at a distance of just 100 kilometers from the comet nucleus next month, on August 6.

Confirmation of this is expected at ESA’s space operations center, in Darmstadt, Germany, at around 09:45 GMT (11:45 CEST) on August 6.

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