The International Rosetta Mission is one of the Cornerstone missions of the European Space Agency’s long term space science program, Horizon 2000. But what makes this mission such a scientific landmark?

This is the first time scientists will have been able to study a comet in situ; previous studies have been either by observation from powerful telescopes on Earth, or by brief fly-bys at distances of thousands of kilometres, such as Giotto / Halley, or Deep Space 1 / Borrelly, and Stardust / Wild 2.

The Rosetta Stone, key to cracking the hieroglyph code.

The Rosetta Mission is named after the Rosetta Stone, a stone tablet discovered in 1799 by Napoleon's forces as they invaded Egypt. The stone features an inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphs as well as in Ancient Greek and Demotic. Because each inscription told the same story, it was possible to decipher the hieroglyphs using the other two languages. This represented a huge advance in hieroglyph translation and understanding. The Ptolemy instrument is named after King Ptolemy, a character who features in the inscriptions. Just as the Rosetta Stone enabled the hieroglyphs to be deciphered, scientists hope that the Rosetta mission will provide some clues to help them understand more about our Solar System.