Philae

One by one, the empty boxes in the Drake Equation are being filled in with actual numbers, and it's looking good. So good that Yuri Milner is spending $100 million of his own money over the next ten years to fund the search for non-human civilisations orbiting other stars.

Astronomers proposed a novel explanation July 6 for the strange appearance of the comet carrying Europe's robot probe Philae through outer space: alien microscopic life.

Mankind's first-ever probe of a comet found traces of organic molecules and a surface much harder than imagined, scientists said Tuesday of initial sample data from robot lab Philae.
      

A popular televangelist in Turkey has condemned the European Space Agency’s (ESA) successful landing of the Philae probe on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, describing the mission as “maniacal.”

The European Space Agency on Thursday published the first image taken from the surface of a comet, and said that its Philae lander is still "stable" despite a failure to latch on properly to the rocky terrain.
     

The European probe Philae has made the first-ever landing on a comet, a crowning phase in a quest to explore the origins of the Solar System, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Nov. 12.

The robot lab landed on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko around seven hours after separating from its mother ship Rosetta more than 510 million kilometres (320 million miles) from Earth, it said.

The European Space Agency (ESA) ordered a probe to attempt Wednesday the first landing on a comet and investigate one of the great mysteries of the Solar System.
      
"We've got the final go" for the operation, an ESA spokeswoman said at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany.
      

The probe Philae has been given the green light to attempt the first landing on a comet on Nov. 12, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.
      
"We've got the final go" for the operation, an ESA spokeswoman said at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany.
      

European spacecraft Rosetta became the first ever to catch up with a comet on Aug. 6, a landmark stage in a decade-long space mission that scientists hope will help unlock some of the secrets of the solar system.