Jupiter-family comet
Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko
The duck-shaped comet orbited by ESA's Rosetta, where the Philae lander made the first landing on a comet nucleus.
- Distance from Earth today
- 756.3 million km5.055 AU · light: 42 min 3 s
- Distance from the Sun today
- 655.0 million km4.379 AU
- As of
- 3 November 2026position from NASA/JPL orbital elements
Where it is today
Top view of the plane of Earth’s orbit, compressed distance scale. Open on the big map with the time slider →
Facts
- Diameter
- 3.40 km
- Mass
- 0.00000992 × 10¹⁸ kg
- Density
- 533 kg/m³
- Rotation period
- 12.8 h
- Semi-major axis
- 3.459 AU (517.5 million km)
- Perihelion
- 1.212 AU
- Aphelion
- 5.705 AU
- Orbital period
- 6.43 years
- Orbital eccentricity
- 0.649
- Orbital inclination
- 3.9°
- Last perihelion
- 2 November 2021
- Next perihelion
- 9 April 2028
- Minimum orbit distance from Earth’s orbit (MOID)
- 0.257 AU (38.44 million km)
Source of the figures: JPL Small-Body Database (public domain).
Discovery: 1969 – Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko
Description
Comet 67P was discovered in 1969 by Klim Churyumov on photographic plates taken by Svetlana Gerasimenko at Alma-Ata. It became famous as the target of ESA's Rosetta, which arrived in 2014 and became the first spacecraft to orbit a comet, following it through its closest approach to the Sun. Rosetta revealed a two-lobed, duck-shaped nucleus with cliffs, pits and boulder fields, and its Philae lander touched down in November 2014 – the first landing on a comet, though it bounced into a shadowed spot. Among many findings, Rosetta detected molecular oxygen and a range of organic molecules in the comet's gas. The mission ended in 2016 with a controlled descent onto the surface.