After a decade-long pursuit through space, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta spacecraft made history Wednesday by meeting up with, and entering orbit around a comet.

The tiny spacecraft arrived for its highly anticipated rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, 405 million kilometers from Earth, shortly after 9 A.M. GMT.

Its entry into orbit around 67P was triggered by a short thruster burn, which set the probe on the first leg of its journey to follow the comet through the solar system.

"After 10 years, five months and four days travelling toward our destination, looping around the Sun five times and clocking up 6.4 billion kilometers, we are delighted to announce finally 'we are here'," ESA's director general Jean-Jacques Dordain announced.

Rosetta is the first mission to orbit the nucleus of a comet. The spacecraft will accompany the comet for more than a year as it hurtles through the inner solar system at nearly 55,000 kilometers per hour.

The culminating point of the programme is planned for November, when the spacecraft will attempt to land a probe on the comet's surface.

Launched in 2004, Rosetta aims to collect data on the comet that will shed light on the creation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.

Comets are considered to be primitive building blocks of the solar system.
Rosetta will observe how the icy celestial body is transformed by the warmth of the sun.

"Rosetta aims to unlock the secrets within," the ESA said.

Last night, Rosetta made the first of three burns to settle into orbit around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. But, just how big is that lump of dirty snow? It is taller than Mount Fuji, big enough to hide a Borg Cube, and it would make a cozy home for a space slug.

In March 2004, ESA's Rosetta spacecraft left Earth in pursuit of comet…

It's taken ten years, five months, and four days to get this close; now it's just two more burns over the next few days to get into final orbit. After that, it'll be a few months of not-so-remote sensing, photography, and other probing by the spacecraft. Finally, in November, Philae will be released to attempt to land on the comet. What do we know about the comet already? Aside from having a tongue-twister of a name, it's irregular object roughly 3 kilometers wide and 5 kilometers across that looks vaguely like a rubber ducky.

We already talked about when the European Space Agency put together a relative scale image comparing the comet to famous buildings and mountains:

But you know what you're really curious about is if a Borg Cube could be hiding behind one. Thankfully, Christopher Becke wanted to know, too, so put together a same-scale compilation of the comet compared to a few notable space-faring objects from Star Trek: