A European spacecraft's lander has succeeded in making a soft landing on a comet for the first time in history.
 
The European Space Agency’s Mission Control in Darmstadt, Germany announced that the Philae lander separated from its Rosetta spacecraft mothership and successfully landed on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Wednesday afternoon.
 
The landing came ten years and eight months after the Rosetta spacecraft and its Philae lander were launched from the Guiana Space Centre.
 
The Philae lander began to take pictures immediately after its descent and is continuously sending images. The lander will carry out exploration missions for around three months, including drilling up to 30 centimeters into the comet's surface and extracting and analyzing soil samples.
 
In July 2005, NASA carried out a test on comets by having the impactor of its Deep Impact space probe collide with comet Tempel 1. Wednesday marked the first time for humankind to study a comet by having a lander descend on a comet.