The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

It is unclear where the myth began, but some at NASA believe that it started with some boastful after-dinner claims during the early days of the manned space programme.

There was some consolation for China, and for the rest of us, from Yang, however. Asked how Earth looked from orbit, he replied: “It’s truly beautiful.”

2014: the Rosetta space odyssey

On 2 March 2004 a European spacecraft that will chase down a comet in search of clues to the origin of life on Earth lifted off from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. An Ariane-5 rocket carrying a European Space Agency probe set course for the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The Rosetta probe will take 12 years to catch the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. When it does it will become the first spacecraft to make a soft, controlled landing on the nucleus of one of the solar system’s enigmatic icy wanderers.

The mission aims to unlock the secrets of the solar system’s beginnings 4.6 billion years ago, of which comets are largely unchanged relics, containing the same materials from which the planets were formed.

It will answer important questions about what the “dirty snowballs” are made of, and even whether comets could have “seeded” Earth with the water and organic chemicals required for the genesis of life.

Rosetta will use three Earth fly-bys and another of Mars as a “gravity slingshot” to catapult it towards Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which has a core about the size of Heathrow Airport.

On completing its 7 billon-mile journey in 2014, Rosetta will orbit the comet’s nucleus and drop a lander named Philae, the size of a washing machine, on to its surface.

The mother ship takes its name from the Rosetta Stone which was discovered in Egypt in 1799 and provided the first key to deciphering hieroglyphics. Scientists hope the data it gathers will offer equally critical insights to the origins of the solar system and terrestrial life. Its Philae lander is named after an island in the Nile where an obelisk critical to the understanding of the Rosetta Stone was found.

The probe was delayed several times because of problems with the Ariane-5 rocket and had originally been scheduled to visit a different comet, named Wirtanen. The European Space Agency changed its target when the Wirtanen launch window was missed early in 2003.