Rosetta lands on a comet

November 12, 2014

Europe's Rosetta probe, after a ten-year chase, dropped a washing-machine-sized lander called Philae onto the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, half a billion kilometers from Earth. It bounced into a shadow and died of low batteries within days, but humanity had touched a comet. The mission ended in 2016 with a controlled crash.