On November 12, the Rosetta mission will make history by becoming the first spacecraft to touch down on a comet. Until today, the European Space Agency has been referring to the craft's epic landing area as “Site J”. But in mid-October the ESA announced a competition to give the site a better name, and the results are in: Site J’s new moniker will be Agilkia.
The new name comes out of Egypt. When the Aswan Dam was completed on the Nile River in the early 1900s, flooding nearly destroyed the temples on the island of Philae. Starting in 1972, the temple complex (which had been built around 370 B.C. as a place of worship for the goddess Isis) was pulled from the water and re-erected on the nearby island of Agilkia.
Since Rosetta’s lander is named Philae, it kinda makes sense to name the landing site Agilkia. Apparently, out of the 8,000 suggestions that the ESA competition drew in, 150 people suggested Agilkia.
