After Rosetta's ten year journey - capped off with the smooth 7 hour descent of its Philae lander - an explosion of elation went up in the European Space Agency's mission control center in Darmstadt, Germany. At around 11:04AM Eastern Time, humanity has, for the first time in history, carefully coaxed an extension of itself onto the surface of a comet. The first few moments after landing turned tense as the ESA team worked to determine if everything worked, but Philae Lander Manager Stephan Ullamec broke the strained silence.
"The harpoons have been fired and the landing gear has been moved inside. We're on the surface. Philae is talking to us, more data to come," he said. Spacecraft operations manager Andrea Accomazzo (whom the internet started calling "ESA Hoodie Guy") couldn't quite help himself.
"We can't be happier than we are now," he yelped.
Rosetta's rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko back in August was a milestone in its own right, as was how the probe slipped right into orbit around it a month later. Now that Philae has cemented itself into the history books, though, it's time for testing. Lots of it. You see, this isn't the first time humanity has come into extremely close contact with a comet -- NASA used its Deep Impact probe (no relation to the awful movie) to smash what was essentially an 820 lb camera-laden bullet into the nucleus of a comet called Tempel 1 in 2005. With an actual, operational spacecraft on the comet, we now have a shot at learning more about the origins of the solar system... not to mention how we all came to be.
Filed under: Science
Source: European Space Agency
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