ESA's Rosetta about to launch Comet 67P lander - watch live

Philae Lander as it will look as it departs Rosetta for the landing. Picture: European Space Agency

The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission to the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is about to launch its lander known as Philae on its long slow approach to 'land' on the surface of the comet.

You can watch the separation coverage from the ESA mission control room here:


If you would like to follow the technical details more closely, there is a very good forum on NASA Spaceflight.

Rosetta was launched in March 2004, and journeyed for 10 years to rendezvous with Comet 67P in August this year. It then proceeded to photograph and map the comet in the search for a good landing site.

There's much more your can read about the mission on ESA's Rosetta website.

As I am about to post this, the Philae lander should have separated from Rosetta. We have to wait about 28 minutes before we will receive the corresponding transmission.

Transit of the Sun by the International Space Station caught on camera

That might not look like much, but I've wanted to try to catch the International Space Station in flight for a looong time.

This was my very first attempt, with the added complexity of it being a transit across the face of the Sun.

The alert said the viewing opportunity was centred 130 kms away from my location. I recorded for several minutes but thought I'd missed it. Until I looked at the recording the next day!

This is not a movie trailer. This is a real space mission pitch.

Scientists are often accused of doing great science, but not doing very good at selling their science.

Perhaps this very cool 'trailer' is a sign things are changing around that?

It's for LISA—the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna—a European proposal to put three laser-equipped spacecraft into an Earth-trailing orbit and configured in a triangle with each side measuring one million kilometres. It uses lasers between the craft to measure separations down to picometres.

The goal? To detect that elusive phenomenon the gravity wave.


I like it!

This is how the mission purpose is described on the project website: