Philae Lands on a Comet
Next: November 12, 2026
The first touchdown on a comet.
The story
Where it comes from
This Story marks the anniversary of 12 November 2014, when the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission set its Philae lander down on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, the first soft landing on a comet. Rosetta had launched on 2 March 2004 and travelled 6.4 billion kilometres to reach the comet. Philae was released 22.5 kilometres from the comet's centre and descended for seven hours with no engine or steering. At 16:03 GMT its signal reached Earth from 510 million kilometres away.
How it's celebrated
There is no organised observance, but the anniversary is a good moment to look again at what Rosetta and Philae found. ESA calls comets time capsules of material left over from when the Sun and planets formed, so this is a day to talk about where everything came from. Rosetta stayed with the comet until 30 September 2016, when it was sent down to the surface to join its lander.
Did you know
- Philae bounced on landing and flew for about two more hours before settling; Rosetta's camera finally spotted it wedged in a dark crack in September 2016.
- The lander is named after Philae, an island in the Nile whose obelisk helped Jean-François Champollion decipher the hieroglyphs of the Rosetta Stone.
- Comet 67P was discovered in 1969 on photographic plates taken at the astrophysical institute in Alma-Ata, now Almaty, in Kazakhstan.
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