Rosetta spacecraft set to rendezvous with rubber-duck comet

With a gentle kick from its onboard thrusters, a European spacecraft will arrive at a speeding comet on Wednesday morning and prepare for a spectacular first in space history. Planned for 10am BST (0900 GMT), the seven-minute burn should bring the €1bn Rosetta probe to within 100km of the strangely-shaped comet which is tearing through space at up to 135,000km/h. The comet is so far from Earth that mission controllers at the European Space Agency (ESA) will have to wait half an hour before they receive any signal back that the manoeuvre has worked. For those who have devoted much of their careers to the mission, the pause will not be pleasant. continue