Amazing accuracy, stunning images

March 2, 2004. Rosetta takes off from the base of Kourou, Guyana, strapped to the top of an Ariane 5 rocket. ESA
March 4, 2005. After a complete orbit around the Sun, Rosetta comes back close to the Earth to benefit from its force of gravity and increase its speed. In passing, she takes this image of a moonrise over the Pacific Ocean. ESA
February 24, 2007. The cameras on the probe can also make colour images. Like this view of Mars, which is here some 240,000 kilometres away ESA
February 25, 2007. The next day, Rosetta brushes the red planet. At 1,000 km from the surface, it takes this selfie, which shows in the foreground one of its solar panels. ESA
July 10, 2010. Brief encounter with the asteroid Lutetia. Like comets, asteroids are fundamental building blocks of the solar system. But over billions of years turning relatively close to the star of the day, they have literally been "cooked" and have lost everything that can evaporate, starting with water ESA
January 20, 2014. At ESA's operations centre in Darmstadt (Germany), the technicians are jubilant. Rosetta has just transmitted a signal at 807 million kilometers from Earth, indicating she has woken up as planned. For 31 months, the probe had been put into hibernation to save its batteries. Juergenmay.com
April 30, 2014. Comet in sight. It is still more than 2 million kilometres away, but we can see it in the centre of the image, with its nascent hair, which already stretches over 1300 kilometres. Top left is the globular cluster M107, part of the Ophiuchus constellation. ESA
August 3, 2014. Rosetta clearly sees the comet, which is only 300 kilometres away. To the great surprise of scientists, it does not look like a big potato, but rather like a bath rubber duck. Three days later, the probe satellites around the comet and tweets a triumphal "Hi, comet!" in about twenty languages. ESA
October 7, 2014. Taken by the Neuchâtel cameras of the Philae lander, stowed under the probe, this magnificent selfie combines two images taken at different exposure times and shows one of Rosetta's solar panels, with the comet in the background. ESA
With its maximum length of four kilometres, Chury is a small comet. Yet, placed on the city of Los Angeles, it would simply crush it, as this photomontage by an Internet user shows. Michel@quark1972
Photographed at 30 km altitude, this was the planned landing site of Philae. ESA
Philae on the surface of the comet. An artist's image shows what should have happened on landing. But in reality, things happened a little differently... ESA
Given the tiny gravity of the comet, the lander weighed only a gram. So he bounced twice like a balloon before "crashing" on his side. A year later, Rosetta found him. The enlargement at the bottom right shows the uncomfortable position Philae was in at the time, with two feet in a crevasse, and the third in the air. ESA

Six billion kilometres in ten years - including two and a half spent "sleeping" - to arrive right on a rock no bigger than four-by-two kilometres in the immensity of interplanetary space... This is the feat accomplished by the Rosetta probe.

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