We’re Landing A Fridge On A Comet Tonight And It’s A Kinda Big Deal

Alright, so it’s less a fridge than it is a fridge-sized landing unit, but the point remains – somewhere around 3 am tonight, the European Space Agency is going to land a probe on a comet for the first time in human history.

The comet in question goes by the the ever-so-graceful name of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and is a craggy, mountain-sized beast roughly 3.5 by 4 km around its middle. The ESA’s Rosetta craft has been hunting 67P for 10 years now, enduring three fly-bys of Earth and one of Mars in order to get up the speed and orbit required to actually rendezvous with the thing (as shown in this helpful NY Times infographic). Now that they’ve gotten close enough to slip into orbit, they’re preparing to offload the probe, Philae – named after the Egyptian obelisk that along with the Rosetta Stone first helped us translate hieroglyphics. Ohhhhh. I get it now.

And now, my little buddy @Philae2014 is GO for separation and #comelanding :-) pic.twitter.com/nvltoAKkbU

— ESA Rosetta Mission (@ESA_Rosetta) November 12, 2014

The ESA team is cautiously optimistic about their chances, but as always there’s a lot of uncertainty in these matters and the best they’re willing to venture is a 75% chance of success. There’s just too many impossible to predict variables involved in such a high speed manoeuvre – from crags to ravines to unexpected dust swirls – so even with the best minds in the world at their disposal they’ve given themselves a three in four chance of pulling off a mission that has taken more than 10 years and 1 billion euro to put together. Yep. Despite what Interstellar might have you believe, we ain’t mastering deep space for some time yet.

The biggest hope with the mission is to understand a little more about the make-up of comets in an attempt to understand the impact (pun intended) meteor strikes may have had on the formation of life on Earth. The lander will continue sending back data until August 2015, when 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko reaches its closest point to the sun – the perihelion for those playing at home – and the little guy burns up.

You can watch the whole thing unfold in real time over at the ESA website. Word of warning: up until a few minutes before the landing occurs, that live feed is going to be about as exciting as gallstones. However as a teaser for what to expect, here’s the footage of the Mars Curiosity lander’s descent onto Mars.

And if you want a soundtrack for this august occasion, than look no further than 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko itself, which has been blasting some sweet tunes out into the vacuum.

Bring on 3 am!