An enlarged image of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko from the Rosetta spacecraft. More images linked below. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)

The European Space Agency has a spacecraft enroute to meet a comet. The name of the comet is Churyumov-Gerasimenko (say that three times fast). Rosetta was launched in 2004 and won’t actually get to the comet in 2014.  ESA is getting ready to put the spacecraft in a hibernation for the last three years of the journey.

The picture above was a test of the on board system called OSIRIS, (short for Optical, Spectroscopic and Infrared Remote Imaging System) and at a distance of over 101 million miles (163 million km) taking a picture of an object that is only 2.5 miles (4 km) in diameter I’d say it works pretty well.

Check out the press release and more images.