In this video, ESA Research Fellows Rachana Bhatawdekar and Sandor Kruk share their experience and explain how to observe and image the comet in the sky. Next, ESA Research Fellow Charlotte Götz tells us more about comets and their tails, and how ESA’s future Comet Interceptor mission, to be launched in 2028, is going to wait for such a ‘great’ comet that has not been discovered yet. The spacecraft will sit in a parking orbit around the Lagrange point L2, 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth, until an interesting ‘pristine’ comet visits the inner Solar System. It will then intersect the comet’s orbit to study its nucleus, gases, dust, and plasma environment. Credit: Rachana Bhatawdekar, Sandor Kruk, Mark McCaughrean, Kai Noeske (2020) Preview image: Courtesy Mark McCaughrean, 12 July 2020 (Wassenaar, The Netherlands)
