There’s fewer than 24 hours until man will attempt to land a spacecraft on a comet travelling through space.

The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft will try and touch down on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 12th November, after a journey that has spanned hundreds of millions of miles.

The landing will mark the end of a ten year flight, in an overall programme which has been running for more than 20 years.

The spacecraft, which was launched in March 2004, reached the comet in August this year after first gaining sight of it in 2011. Once it had seen the comet up close it was able to map its surface and allow the space agency to pick a soft-landing site for it.

The spacecraft will attempt to stay on the comet as it makes its journey around the sun during 2015.

Here’s an overview of the spacecraft’s journey from the drawing board to deep-space.



The comet was first spotted in 1969 by astronomers Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko, took sight of it at from an observatory in Kazakhstan.

These images were the ones captured by the pair, who, in a time before digital cameras, had to use glass plates with long exposures to be able to spot the comet. A task they completed by comparing the two captures, which showed the comets movement.

Image courtesy of K. Churyumov

This inconspicuous box was the original 1998 design of the Rosetta lander.

It was originally designe to land on Comet 46P/Wirtanen in November 2011, however this did not come to pass.

Image courtesy of: ESA

In 2002 the spacecraft was undergoing testing to ensure the wings could properly unfurl sow hen in space it would be able to power itself.

The pair of wings stretches 32-m from tip-to-tip and on top of the spacecraft the 2.2 diamete high-gain antenna can be seen. This is a steerable dish used to send data from the mission back to Earth.

Image courtesy of: ESA-Anneke Le Floc’h

At 7:17am (GMT) on March 2 2004 Rosetta was launched from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

It marked the start of the journey, which was originally approved by the European Space Agency in 1993.

Image courtesy of: ESA/CNES/ARIANESPACE-Service Optique CSG

In 2007 Rosetta snapped this picture as it passed Mars. At its closest passing point the spacecraft was 250km from the surface of the red planet.

However, this image, where the northern hemisphere of can be seen, was captured when it was 1,000km away from the planet. The image was originally taken in black and white, with space officials adding the representative colours.

Image courtesy of: ESA

This was the scene at the European Space Agency when Rosetta came out of hibernation on 20th January this year.

The comet had spent more than 10 years in space travelling more than 500m miles from Earth returned a signal that was sent out by the space agency.

Image courtesy of: ESA – Jürgen Mai

In July of this year the spacecraft was 1933km from the comet – this was its view.

Image courtesy of: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

By August the full scale of the comet could be seen as Rosetta had made it to be 79km away from its surface.

The comet’s nucleus is around 4km across.

Image courtesy of: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

In a similar style to the Mars photo, taken seven years earlier, the spacecraft captured this image of the comet when it was just 50km away from its surface.

The image, which was captured at the beginning of September, is made up on two separate images to allow for the level of detail to be shown.

Image courtesy of: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA

As the spacecraft’s journey comes to an end four potential landing sites on the comets surface were highlighted by the spacecraft’s team, however this was the eventual one that was picked.

It is located at the head of the comet and here was pictured from just 30km.

Image courtesy of: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

You will be able to watch the live landing of the spacecraft here on the ESA website.

Featured image courtesy of European Space Agency.