每日阅读2014年11月.docVIP

Touchdown Comets are leftovers from the birth of the solar system. For the first time, a space ship has landed on one Nov 12th 2014 | From the print edition SPACE exploration is a serious scientific business. But ever since the beginning of the Space Age in the 1950s, it has been accompanied by a hefty dose of glitz and PR. Two years ago, Earthlings watched with bated breath as a one-tonne, nuclear-powered, laser-armed robot rover fizzed through the Martian atmosphere, before being deposited gently on the surface by a rocket-powered “skycrane”. The distance between Mars and Earth meant that