Far-sighted: The ESA's director of science Roger Bonnet with a model of the Rosetta spacecraft, 1 July 1999. Photograph: Matthew Fearn/PA Right now, a European spacecraft is circling a dark, icy object called comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after a 10-year, 6bn-kilometre journey. The encounter between Rosetta and the comet, and the little lander Philae on the comet’s surface, happened because, in 1980, in the infancy of the European Space Agency, scientists met in Strasbourg to work out what such an agency might do. One recommendation was a landing on Titan, one of the moons of Saturn. Another was a comet rendezvous and an asteroid flyby. The Europeans partnered with Nasa to reach Saturn and...
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