Philae made the first successful landing on a comet nucleus in 2014.
The European Space Agency built Philae as the lander for the Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Rosetta released Philae on 12 November 2014 after traveling with the comet for years.
Philae’s harpoons failed to anchor it during touchdown, so the lander bounced several times before coming to rest in a shadowed location. It still deployed instruments and transmitted data, including measurements of the comet’s surface and organic compounds.
Rosetta and Philae are sometimes treated as interchangeable names, but they performed different jobs. Rosetta was the orbiter that escorted and studied the comet from space; Philae was the smaller lander that descended to the nucleus. Philae’s battery-powered operations ended after about two days, though it later briefly reawakened when sunlight reached its solar panels.