PHILAE, the Lander of the ROSETTA Mission on its way to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

“Rosetta” is a Cornerstone Mission of the previous Horizon 2000 ESA Programme. Its goal is to rendezvous with comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko after a 10 years cruise and to study both its nucleus and coma through an orbiting spacecraft and a landed platform. The latter, named “Philae”, after the island where the obelisk was found which helped together with the stone of Rosetta to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs, has been designed to land softly on the comet nucleus and is equipped with 10 scientific instruments to perform in-situ studies of the cometary material. Philae has been provided by an international consortium with participation of Germany (lead), France, Italy, UK, Finland, Ireland, Hungary and Austria. Rosetta has successfully been launched on March 2 nd , 2004 from Kourou in French Guyane. After the launch the commissioning of both spacecraft and payload, including the Lander, has started. Philae is operated by the Lander control centre (LCC) at DLR, Cologne and the Science Operations and Navigation Centre (SONC) at CNES, Toulouse via ESOC in Darmstadt.