Moon? Mars? Rosetta, an European Space Agency's Mission has Reached a Comet!

Graphic of Rosetta

The Rosetta mission received news of a grand and historic success as philae landed itself on the comet 67P/Churyumov - Gerasimenko. But here's a weird thing, the lander landed on the comet not one but two times on the comet, as data received from the lander says. Let us see some background info about this astounding mission.

The whole machine consisted of two main parts, the Rosetta probe and Philae lander. it was scheduled for launch on 12 January 2003. But it was delayed, because of some technical failures in the Ariane 5 rocket carrier, until the cause of the failure was found.

 The launch was then rescheduled on 26 February 2004 with comet rendezvous in 2014. After two failed launch attempts, Rosetta was successfully launched on 2 march 2004, from the Guiana Space Centre.

Before it rendezvoused with the comet, Rosetta made three fly-bys of earth and one fly-by of Mars.
in August 2014, Rosetta reached the comet. On 10 September it entered the orbit of the comet. the comet's surface was rugged, according to data sent by Rosetta. But anyway, by 25 August 2014, five locations were marked by the spacecraft for landing.

The philae lander was released and on contact with the surface, it should have fired two harpoons to hang on to the comet, but received data say that the harpoons were not activated as the landing was soft. Well... mistakes happen, right? Philae landed on the surface of the comet and the harpoons were fired and the first data about the comet was received on 12 November 2014.