Europe’s Philae spacecraft made history by becoming the first man-made object to touch down on a comet. The Philae probe landed safely on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at the end of an epic four billion mile journey through space that began in 2004. A radio signal confirming the landing was received by scientists just after 4pm UK time on Wednesday, after taking almost half an hour to travel the 316 million miles distance to Earth. Mission controllers had to endure a tense wait of almost seven hours as the spider-like craft descended to the surface of the comet, a 2.5 mile-wide rugged lump of ice and dust hurtling through space at around 40,000 mph. When news of the landing came, ecstatic scientists and engineers gathered at the European Space Agency operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany, cheered, clapped and hugged each other.
