Rosetta/Philae Comet Landing

ESA's Rosetta spacecraft chased Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for 10 years and 6.4 billion km before arriving in 2014 and deploying the Philae lander — the first spacecraft to land on a comet. Philae bounced twice before settling in a shadowed crevice, but still returned 60 hours of data. Rosetta discovered that the comet's water had a different isotopic signature than Earth's oceans, challenging the theory that comets delivered our water. The mission ended in 2016 with Rosetta's controlled crash onto the comet's surface.