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Rosetta mission lands its probe on a comet and makes history Throughout human history, comets have been distant, mysterious heavenly bodies. The hunks of rock and ice streak through the sky, streaming bright tails of gas as the sun warms them. On Wednesday, mankind finally made contact with one. The Rosetta spacecraft defied all odds and dropped its payload, a comet-sniffing probe named Philae, on a cold, speeding target more than 300 million miles from Earth. Although scientists aren’t yet sure whether the probe will be able to anchor itself securely, for now its systems are operational and responsive. This comes as the climax of a decade-long mission. Swaddled inside the comet are the secrets of the early solar system, the elements present when the sun was new and the planets were forming. To study a comet up close would be a cosmological dream, a time capsule like scientists have never laid eyes on. The black ice of these comets keeps those secrets preserved — but also largely hidden. This one is named 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, an ancient, puckered comet that fell from a cluster of similar bodies near Neptune many years ago. Now in an elliptical orbit around the sun, it has been getting closer and closer to Earth with each go-round. But to really get an intimate look at the comet, scientists knew they’d have to get right on top of it. Landing a 220-pound probe on a 2.5-mile-wide comet is no small step for mankind. The comet hurtles around the sun at a speed of 84,000 miles per hour and doesn’t even have the decency to be smooth and evenly shaped, as comets so often appear to be in images. Instead, the landing target is pitted and uneven, with the appearance of a child’s Play-Doh impression of a duck. Tensions were high in the European Space Agency’s mission control room in Darmstadt, Germany, on Wednesday as the clock ticked closer to the proposed landing window. At 4 a.m. Eastern time, the team watched as Rosetta successfully ejected Philae, giving it a push to