Rosetta took a ten year journey from its launch pad to the comet 67P. It covered vast distances which took the spacecraft by planets and asteroids. Its fascinating to imagine that in this time, Rosetta passed Earth three times and Mars once. This was obviously calculated and planned by the experts, so that the spacecraft could receive gravitational boosts in its speeds as it passed the planets, otherwise the spacecraft was too heavy to be dispatched to the Comet directly.
The spacecraft was launched from French Guiana on March 2, 2004, through a powerful European built Ariane 5 rocket. The mission planners had devised a path for Rosetta to fly by earth in March 2005 then by Mars in February 2007. The aircraft was also put into hibernation in June 2011 to conserve power. It was aroused from its sleep in January to equip itself for its arrival on August 6th.
This mission is perhaps one of the most complex and fascinating missions in space exploration history and it is hoped that it will reveal many unsolved mysteries regarding life on earth, possible life on other planets and shed some more light on the nature of comets and unexplained phenomenon associated with them.