On this day in space! Sept. 2, 2016: Lost and found! Rosetta sees Philae lander on Comet 67P

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On Sept. 2, 2016, the European Space Agency finally located Philae, its long-lost comet lander.

On Sept. 2, 2016, the European Space Agency finally located Philae, its long-lost comet lander. Philae is a spacecraft about the size of a washing machine, and it was dropped off at Comet 67P by another spacecraft named Rosetta in November 2014.

Philae's Incredible Comet Odyssey: Photos

But when Philae's landing harpoons failed to deploy, it bounced all over the comet before tumbling into a shady place where its solar panels couldn't collect enough light. Philae did transmit some data to Rosetta while using the last of its batteries after the landing, and it occasionally made contact for months after the crash.

This artist impression shows the Rosetta spacecraft releasing the Philae lander down to Comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko's surface. (Image credit: ESA–C. Carreau/ATG medialab)

Rosetta kept looking for Philae by flying around Comet 67P and taking photos. It took Rosetta almost two years to find Philae. A photo taken on Sept. 2, 2016 showed little Philae lying on its side in a dark, rocky crevice.

Locating Philae's grave finally gave the European Space Agency some closure less than a month before Rosetta's mission came to an end with another epic crash landing on Comet 67/P.

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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