 On November 12th, this animation should become reality. The Rosetta mission will achieve a first when the Filet Lander touches down on Comet 67P, Jury of Gerasimenko. As a space scientist working with those who have instruments on board this lander, I'm going to take you through five of the questions I'm always being asked about the Rosetta mission. And I'll be meeting the OU experts who have all the answers. I guess it's just the irresistible curiosity of humans. We simply just have to know what's out there. But actually there are some fundamental scientific reasons to visit Comet 2. So why do we bother going to a comet? Well we want to go to a comet because it's there. It's an object in our astronomical backyard and we want to know what it looks like and what it's made out of. And from my own research I know that comets contain organic material and water. What are we going to learn from Rosetta about this? We want to know whether the water in a comet has a relationship with water on earth and if it does we then want to study the organics in the comet to know something about the organics that were brought to the surface of the early earth. Harpoons in space, who would have thought? One of the things about this landing is that it's nothing like any other landing to date on a planet or a moon. So Andy why do we need harpoons on the Philae lander? There are two harpoons on board and it's the first time it's been used in space because the gravity in a comet is so low. So it's used to attach the lander to the surface. So are the harpoons just required for the landing sequence? Not just the landing sequence but throughout the mission the comet is going to get more active. Gas is going to come off trying to push the lander away from the comet so it's to keep it firmly attached throughout the whole of the mission. Well actually it's not an oven big enough to cook your pizza but instead a version of a lab instrument that's to heat up samples for analysis. So Simon where are the ovens on board the lander? Yeah there's a number of ovens on the instrument. They're located behind this drill on a circular carousel and the ovens themselves are these little devices. Why do we need ovens? Well the OU's instrument is a mass spectrometer and we need to analyse gases so we take the solid cometary material, pop it into the oven and heat it up and we get the gases off that we can analyse. The Open University's instrument Ptolemy is located inside the lander and it's actually located in this compartment here. So this is Ptolemy and the gas from the oven is led via pipe into here for analysis. I'm always being asked this question because it's possible that Philae will not land successfully and that the instruments may be unable to work. But what would happen to the mission then? The instruments including Ptolemy and this is a life-size version of Ptolemy are already pre-programmed and so we will sniff the comet whatever happens whichever way we land. That's brilliant so how does this Ptolemy model you're holding relate to the lab one we're standing next to? Well as you can see it's a miniaturisation of this whole system and has very similar functionality and we've been applying the know-how that we developed in producing Ptolemy to several challenges back here on earth. That's included healthcare, safety equipment and also even measuring the quality of our drinking water. This could seem like a bit of an overclaim but is it? We only have to think back to the demise of the dinosaurs who were likely killed off by a comet colliding with the earth. Could this mission save the world? Well not directly no but it could indirectly. Comets travel through the solar system all the time. Some of them come very near the earth some might even have hit the earth in the past. Now the more we know about comets their composition how tough they are how easily they break up the better it is so that we can understand more about deflecting them away from the earth. It might sound like science fiction the idea of deflecting a comet but if the choice is between science fiction and global devastation because a comet hits what choice do you have?