Hopefully you’ve been paying attention to this story for awhile now, but if you haven’t, prepare to have your mind blown. The European Space Agency, or ESA, has just successfully landed a probe on a comet. This is the first time humans have ever accomplished such a feat.
The orbiter, called Rosetta, has spent the last 10 years in space, patiently waiting to study Comet 67P, or Churyumov-Gerasimenko. By now, Rosetta has taken an astonishing 4 billion-mile journey around the solar system. After waking from a deep space sleep, Rosetta aligned itself with the orbit of Comet 67P, and began its long-awaited mission of landing the probe, Philae, successfully on the comet’s surface.
For those interested in more details about Rosetta’s mission, check out this infographic via the Washington Post, otherwise scroll down to see some stunning photographs of the icy comet taken by the probe.
These photos were taken from the advanced camera system housed in the Rosetta orbiter, and the Philae probe. Scroll down to view them, courtesy of the ESA.
For more images of the comet and this historic mission, visit the ESA’s flickr page here.
