The ESA/NASA SOHO spacecraft has just discovered its 1500th comet, making it more successful than all other comet discoverers throughout history put together. Not bad for a spacecraft that was designed as a solar physics mission.
SOHO’s record-breaking discovery was made on 25 June. The images of the small and faint object were captured by the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronograph (LASCO), one of 12 instruments on board.