Rosetta’s Trajectory

This photo found on NASA’s Solar Exploration page diagrams the trajectory for the European Space Agency’s mission Rosetta’s exploration of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Launched in 2004, Rosetta has since flown-by Earth three times, Mars, and two asteroids, and is scheduled to arrive at the comet later this year.  It’s so how cool scientist are ale to calculate precisely where the planets, asteroids, and comet will be at a given point in time in the future and how long it will take Rosetta to reach it on it’s given path.