The trip: Unbelievable precision, astounding images
March 2, 2004. Rosetta launched from Kourou, French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 rocket.
ESA
March 4, 2005. After completing an orbit around the sun, Rosetta returns close to earth to use its gravity to accelerate. On the way, it captured this image of the moon rising over the Pacific ocean.
ESA
February 24, 2007. The camera sensors can also capture images in colour. Like this view of Mars some 240,000 kilometres away.
ESA
February 25, 2007. The next day it skims past the red planet. It takes a selfie around 1000 km from the planet's surface, showing one of its solar panels in the foreground.
ESA
July 10, 2010. A brief encounter with the asteroid Lutetia. Like comets, asteroids are the building blocks of the solar system. But after billions of years of travelling relatively close to stars, they are literally "cooked". They have lost anything that can evaporate, starting with water.
ESA
January 20, 2014. Mission staff rejoice at the ESA's centre of operations in Darmstadt, Germany. Around 807 million kilometres from earth, Rosetta transmits a signal that indicates it has woken up as planned. For 31 months, the spacecraft was in hibernation to conserve its batteries.
Juergenmay.com
April 30, 2014. The comet in sight. It is more than 2 million km away but can still be identified in the centre of the image with its growing tail, that already stretches over 1300 km. On the top left is the M107 globular cluster in the Ophiuchus constellation.
ESA
August 3, 2014. Rosetta has the comet in its sights, barely 300 km away. To the great surprise of scientists, the Chury comet looks more like a rubber bath duck than a giant potato. Three days later, the spacecraft orbits the comet and triumphantly tweets "Hello, comet!" in 20 or so languages.
ESA
October 7, 2014. The Neuchâtel-made camera of the Philae lander takes an amazing selfie composed of two images taken at different exposures. It shows one of the Rosetta's solar panels with the comet in the background.
ESA
With a maximum length of four kilometres, Chury is a small comet. However, it looks formidable when superimposed over the city of Los Angeles in this photo montage posted on the internet.
ESA
The landing site of the Philae lander photographed from 30 km away.
ESA
An artist's impression of Philae on the surface of the comet. The landing is far from a routine affair and eagerly anticipated.
ESA
The gravity of the comet is so minuscule that the 100kg lander weighs only a little more than 1g on it. It would only take a mild jet of gas - like this one photographed on September 10 - to send Philae hurtling into space.
ESA
Six billion kilometres in ten years – of which two were spent in “hibernation” – to reach a comet that is a mere 4×2 kilometres in size: that is the remarkable achievement of the Rosetta spacecraft. And the best is yet to come.
All images by ESA except No 10 by Michel@quark1972 via Twitter
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