Rosetta Team Proposes Landing On Comet To Finish Mission

schwit1 writes: Rather than simply turn off the spacecraft when its funding runs out at the end of 2015, Rosetta's science team has proposed that the mission get a nine-month extension, during which they will slowly spiral into the comet and gently land. Their proposal is similar to what American scientists did with their NEAR spacecraft, which hadn't been designed to land on an asteroid but was successfully eased onto the surface of Eros, where it operated for a very short time.