TOULOUSE (Reuters) - The European spacecraft Rosetta will crash-land on the surface of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and end its 12-year space odyssey on September 30, France's National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) said on Thursday.
Rosetta has helped scientists better understand how the Earth and other planets are formed. The space craft detected key organic compounds in a comet, bolstering the notion that comets delivered the chemical building blocks for life long ago to Earth and throughout the solar system.