Philae (spacecraft)

Philae was a small robotic lander built for the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission. It rode to its target on the Rosetta orbiter, launched on an Ariane 5G+ rocket from French Guiana on 2 March 2004, and was released to land on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, touching down on 12 November 2014. Its anchoring harpoons failed to deploy and the thruster meant to press it onto the surface did not fire, so it bounced twice and came to rest in a poor position, still achieving the first soft landing on a comet nucleus. Philae sent back the first images from a comet's surface and made the first in-situ analysis of a comet nucleus for about 64 hours, until its batteries ran down. It communicated only sporadically between June and July 2015 and was then silent. Rosetta photographs in September 2016 showed it lying on its side in a deep crack in the shadow of a cliff. The name comes from the Philae obelisk, which helped scholars decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs. DLR's Lander Control Center in Cologne monitored and operated it, with support from CNES in Toulouse.