The Philae Lander Touches Down On A Comet: Watch The Livestream Here

On Wednesday morning, the Philae lander, a robotic spacecraft created by the European Space Agency, landed on a comet named 67P/Churyumox-Gerasimenko around 11 a.m. EST. The Philae lander has been aboard the Rosetta spacecraft for a decade, finally making contact with the comet at a location 300 million miles from Earth.

This is the first time in history a manmade device has made physical contact with a comet. Though the naked eye wouldn’t be able to spot the event, viewers can see the comet’s scope via live streaming broadcasts by NASA and the ESA below.

It took seven hours for the Philae to reach the 67P/Churyumox-Geraskimenko, and the European Space Agency provided a useful graph to chart the lander’s descent.

You can watch the livestream via the European Space Agency here.

You can also view the NASA livestream below:

Robotic telescope service Slooh will also begin a live broadcast at 2 p.m. EST on Wednesday. Visit the Slooh site here. The broadcast will include interviews with ESA scientists and photos from the comet from an observatory at the Institute of Astrophysics in the Canary Islands. Viewers can ask questions during the broadcast via Twitter by using #SloohRosetta

The Philae lander is named after Philae island in the Nile, where an obelisk was discovered along with the Rosetta Stone, two tools used to transcribe Egyptian hieroglyphics.