Missing comet lander Philae spotted at last: ESA

September 05, 2016 20:28

Europe's Rosetta spacecraft has finally spotted the tiny lander Philae stuck in a dark crack on the surface of its comet home -- the first glimpse since

the robot lab crashlanded in 2014, ground controllers said today.

The European Space Agency released a photograph of the washing machine-sized robot lab on the comet's rough surface, one leg thrust into the air.

The image, captured with the Rosetta orbiter's OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on Friday last week, were downloaded two days later -- just weeks before the official end of the ground-breaking science mission to unravel the mysteries of life on Earth.

"With only a month left of the Rosetta mission, we are so happy to have finally imaged Philae and to see it in such amazing detail," Cecilia Tubiana of the OSIRIS camera team, the first person to see the images, said in a statement.

The 1.3-billion-euro mission, saw Rosetta launched into space in March 2004, with Philae riding piggyback.

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