Close pass by sun didn’t radically alter comet 67P’s landscape
Despite cliff collapses and other seasonal changes, comet features are old, study says
At least one of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s dusty outbursts was the result of a landslide. But such changes to the surface of the comet haven’t radically altered its appearance, suggesting it has had roughly the same look for decades — or longer.
Images from the Rosetta spacecraft taken before its demise show what happened to the comet as it passed close to the sun in 2015. Cliffs collapsed, ripplelike features about 100 meters across appeared and disappeared, dust eroded and boulders moved about — probably as a result of changes in exposure to sunlight, researchers report online March 21 in Science.