2014 will be remembered as the year of the “Rosetta mission” . His arrival at comet 67 / P Churyumov-Gerasimenko has been designated by the world's most prestigious scientific journals such as Science or Nature as the most outstanding scientific advance of 2014.
This breakthrough "has captured the public's imagination with images transmitted from beyond Mars and opens a new era in comet science, " explains Science magazine. And this is the first time that a space mission has managed to get around a comet and land a robotic module on it. Taking into account that the gravitational attraction of a comet is negligible compared to that of a planet, the feat was really complicated .
If everything goes as planned, the Rosetta mission will become the first to accompany a comet in its approach to the Sun to see how it changes with the heat of our star.
If the Rosetta mission is the best of 2014 in science, the worst has been the response to the Ebola outbreak in the world . Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the international community “took too long to react and local governments played the ostrich and made up the case reports. The result is a devastating epidemic that remains uncontrolled, ”says Science. For this reason, the response to Ebola is this year's great science fiasco.
