First ever contact with a comet: landing Philade probe

Touchdown! The Philae probe has just made a historic landing on the surface of the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The progress of the operation can be monitored almost live on NASA TV .

Never in the history of mankind have we been able to turn off such an operation.
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“This is a big step for human civilization,” said experts of the European Space Agency.



The importance of studying comets is difficult to overestimate. This is part of the Oort cloud that is capable of carrying biological material. Perhaps, once life came to Earth from just one of the meteorites, which had deviated from the comet's tail. In addition, comets have always played an important role in religious life: the ancients usually perceived them as harbingers of disasters. Only modern science has been able to prove that this is not a punishment for our offenses, but an ordinary natural phenomenon.

The landing of the Philae probe on the surface of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko was the result of a ten-year operation, which began in 2004 with the launch of the Rosetta vehicle. He traveled 6.4 billion km, before meeting with the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the core of which is 4 km. An ice block just outside the Sun began to eject the tail, visible from terrestrial telescopes.

On August 6, the spacecraft approached a distance of 100 km, then began photographing the surface of the comet and looking for the best place for comming.



The contact of the Philae 100-kg probe with the comet's core took place at 7:35 AM PST. After 28 minutes, the signal reached Earth, since the comet is now 450 million km away.