10 Incredible Facts About The Philae Comet Landing

10. It's The First Spacecraft To Make A Controlled Landing On A Comet

Let's get the obvious one out of the way first. The Philae lander is the very first spacecraft ever to land on the surface of a moving comet. It's hard to overstate just how big of a landmark this is with regards to the big picture of space exploration. It's important to remember that comets have much wider significance than just being floating balls of ice, dust and rock. They're the leftovers from the creation of our solar system, which includes Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Scientists at the European Space Agency hope that Philae's landing on Chury may even give us some kind of insight into how life originally developed on Earth.