NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) for 24 October 2026 features one of the best-known images from the European Space Agency's comet mission: a selfie of the Rosetta spacecraft taken while it was close to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
The image came from the CIVA camera on the Philae lander, which was still attached to Rosetta at the time. Part of the probe's long solar array fills the foreground, and the comet's dark, irregular two-lobed nucleus appears in the background.
Rosetta launched in 2004 and reached 67P in 2014 after a ten-year journey. Philae became the first spacecraft to land on a comet nucleus in November 2014. The orbiter studied the comet for about two years and ended its mission in September 2016 with a controlled descent onto the surface.
