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.

Are you ready for your closeup, Comet 67P? After a 10-year journey, the Rosetta spacecraft finally reached its destination this morning. Launched by the European Space Agency in 2004, the spacecraft has traveled across four billion(!) miles to a comet named “67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko." Now both objects are circling the Sun somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, traveling at 34,000 miles per hour.

Behold the glory that is the first rainbow image obtained from Venus. This rainbow is a type of glory,formed by light passing through cloud droplets. Glories are formed when light bounces off sphericalcloud particlesin the same direction from which it came, creating a ring of light only visible if you (or a spacecraft) are directly betweenthe center of the glory and the sun. That's what happened here - the image below was captured bythe European Space Agency's Venus Express, and reported in the journal Icarus.

A one-ton European Space Agency satellite finally plunged to Earth on Sunday. Dozens of charred pieces of it—the largest pieces could be 200 pounds—likely landed in the Atlantic Ocean near the Falkland Islands. One Falkland Islander even snapped a photo of the incinerating satellite as it streaked down the sky.

Tersicoccus phoenicis is no ordinary microbe. This rare bacterium can withstand chemical cleaning, ultraviolet rays, and a dearth of nutrients to live in some of the most sterile places around: the cleanrooms that space agencies like NASA and the European Space Agency keep as clean as possible to prevent Earth's bacteria from hitching a ride into space.

Bon voyage, Planck. The European Space Agency sent the final command to the Planck space telescope today, ending a four-and-a-half year mission to examine the universe's Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), ancient lightthat originated just after the Big Bang.Planck will now go into permanent hibernation and be put intoorbit around the sun.