Rosetta flight director says Philae ready for release

Decades of searching in the Andromeda Galaxy has finally paid off, with the discovery of an elusive breed of stellar corpse — a neutron star, by ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope. Neutron stars are the small and extraordinarily dense remains of a once-massive star that exploded as a powerful supernova at the end of its natural life.

ESA’s XMM-Newton has found a pulsar – the spinning remains of a once-massive star – that is a thousand times brighter than previously thought possible.

Europe’s Philae spacecraft is set to go for landing on a comet, a never-before-tried maneuver that includes a perilous seven-hour descent and an uncontrolled touchdown.