Monica Grady

The solar system beyond Earth is often depicted as a dark, hostile and barren place where you absolutely wouldn’t want to get stranded.

After a decade-long journey through space, the Rosetta spacecraft has spent the past year less than 100km from the nucleus of comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko, capturing some stunningly detailed images.

It doesn’t sound much of a reward for all the effort of designing and building the spacecraft—but for planetary scientists, the data coming back from the mission is pure gold.

Pluto, a celestial oddball, could tell us a lot about the formation of the Solar System. A probe flyby on July 14 will start bringing in the data!

As every good marketing manager knows, value for money is a major driver for the success of a product.

World Space Week is one of a series of events co-ordinated by the UN to celebrate the global nature of space exploration. It was established in 1999.