In honor of my final blog post, I felt like it was only fitting that it be about the future and where it is taking us.

Just this past week, a small probe sent into space by the European Space Agency landed on a comet known as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, over three hundred million miles away from Earth. This is a completely unprecedented moment, a probe has never before landed on a comet (unless we’re talking about Armageddon with Bruce Willis). This landing was a trip that took over twenty years to complete, with the probe travelling four billion miles to reach its goal. For such a massive event, I feel like this story has completely been swept under the rug. It was all over the news the day of the event, and from that day on I haven’t heard one update on the event whatsoever. This event is more than just one single incident, it is the start of a vast movement into space exploration, this landing shows that our capabilities for space travel are increasing rapidly. I don’t have much of an understanding of it, but probes like this are what the Lunar Lion project are involved with actually, just directed towards the moon. Maybe after they accomplish their goal of reaching the moon, they can rebrand themselves and become the Comet Lion.

One update I did see regarding the comet, however, was that the probe has been collecting samples of the comet, a few of which contain organic compounds. Any material containing carbon is considered an organic compound, as carbon is the building block of all life. Comets contain matter dated to about 4.5 billion years ago, which is awfully close to the beginning of our planet. This supports a theory that comets were responsible for bringing some more complex compounds such as amino acids to Earth, dawning all of the life that we know now. Amino acids are the building blocks for proteins, and proteins are the building blocks of, well, us.

Unfortunatately, the probe ran out of battery last Friday, but scientists were able to adjust one of its solar panels towards more sunlight before it became inoperable. They hope that within the next couple months or by summer at the latest, that the probe will recharge enough to become operable and they can continue to conduct more research and gather more data on the comet. Regardless, it is a monumental event for both engineers and scientists across all fields. This landing reaffirms our capabilities as a race, and reminds us that we can accomplish anything with our work.

and just like that, we’ve reached the end of my final blog post. I sincerely hope that reading my blog has kept you more up-to-date with events going on outside more than just the Penn State community. It can be so easy to get caught up in this amazing town that we forget that there are actually other things going on in the world. But within the community, I also hope that everyone had an amazing first semester here in State College! Here’s to seven more wonderful semesters in the Happiest Valley of all. Thank you for reading.