ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft has beamed back new images from the close encounter with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The images, which were captured from a distance of 7.9 km, reveal 4km wide mash of ice shards, snowflakes, pebbles and boulders on the comet’s surface.

Everything about the comet is ancient. The comet’s surface is dead and weird, with scattered rubble. However, no two places are the same. There are 900m high cliffs, and flat dunes of drifting powdered ice.

The reason behind comet’s unusual ‘rubber-duck’ shape is due to an ancient collision between two large piles of rubble out in the distant Oort cloud surrounding our solar system. It may have happened that collision may have sent it spiraling down towards the sun.

The Rosetta probe, which has been examining the chemical processes involved in the creation of comet tails has already shown how photons from the sun collide with water and carbon dioxide molecules.

The photons ionize them and cause them to clash with other water and carbon dioxide molecules. This propels them out into space.

The probe lost contact with its lander Philae ever since it was dropped down on the comet’s surface on November 12, 2014.

Everything went well until the lander bounced, which caused it to land in a shady spot where its solar panels were unable to collect enough energy to keep it operating and doing science.

European Space Agency researchers still expect that the fridge-sized lander will get enough sun to warm up and reboot its computer systems.