NASA has captured some crazy footage of comet ISON’s maiden voyage past the planet earth.

The footage above shows ISON’s path from November 20th up until November 25th, speeding past mercury and earth on its journey around the sun.

The comet will begin its orbit around the sun tomorrow, in an encounter that could spell doom for the massive space rock.  The sun’s radiation will begin to weaken the comet by boiling its water even before it even gets close.

Even if it survives that, it will then have to withstand even greater radiation and pressure as it actually flies by the sun’s surface.

NASA claims that, even if ISON is burned to a cinder by the sun, the tracking of its brief journey will still contribute very importantly to our knowledge of the cosmos.

The super-space-agency says that it’ll be able to determine what the comet is made of, learn a little bit more about how the sun works, and even shed some light on the origin of the solar system.

This latest piece of video is from the Heliospheric Imager on NASA’s STEREO spacecraft.

Yup, it’s a spacecraft shaped like a boombox. Dolby-space-stereo.

[Source : The Verge, Youtube]