The European Space Agency's Rosetta comet probe will make its closest approach to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko February next year.

This unusually low flyby will be an opportunity for Rosetta to pinpoint the exact location of its Philae lander that touched down on Comet 67P in November, the first spacecraft to ever land on a comet. Philae, however, failed to land at its chosen location since it bounced on landing a came to rest further away.

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After its historic comet landing, Philae took its first pictures of the comet and gathered scientific data by analyzing the comet's composition with its suite of scientific instruments.

From December 12 to 14, Rosetta captured images of the comet's surface again to track down the exact location of the lander.

This will be quite a challenge for researchers since these images consist of four million pixels that will be scanned for bright points to discover Philae's location.

Scientists have constructed a preliminary model of the final landing location and the comet's jagged terrain to retrace what happened to the lander on landing. The team is confident they will hear from the lander again.

Rosetta's near approach will also allow it to acquire more data and higher resolution imagery of a few inches per pixel. This will also give Rosetta a chance to study how comet dust production is accelerated by its gas emissions as it nears the Sun.

Matt Taylor, Rosetta project scientist from the European Space Research and Technology Center, said this is the earliest stage the team can carry out preparations without affecting the probe's orbit. He noted this opportunity is rare and should be seized before the comet becomes more active and dangerous.

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