Starry-eyed over comets

摘要

In a world jaded by astonishing technology, it takes a lot to rouse people - but the European Space Agency has achieved just that, with a wildly audacious first. When a spacecraft about the size of a hatchback car snuggled in next to a comet some 405 million km from Earth, the world - it can be fairly said - stopped to take note. Even the most staid of news outlets were a bit awed, and a company called Planetary Resources -which was coincidentally formed with the goal of mining asteroids - called the rendezvous "the most interesting thing to happen in 4.6 billion years".