Video: Mission control celebrates separation but anxiety builds over landing

This unusual view of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from Rosetta shows the darker side of the comet.

Research teams across Europe spent the last half-year meticulously going through a wish list of experiments for the Philae comet lander without knowing whether they would ever get a chance to execute the tasks.

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is now less than a month from perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun occurring on 13 August. ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft captured this view of enhanced activity from the comet’s twin-lobed nucleus on 7 July.