The European Space Agency launched the Philae lander on the 2nd of March 2004 at 07:17 UTC. This Ariane 5G+ rocket carried both the Rosetta orbiter and the Philae probe into space for a journey lasting 3,907 days.
Philae touched down on the 12th of November 2014 at 15:34:04 UTC SCET after a twenty-eight-minute signal delay reached Earth. The anchoring harpoons failed to deploy because the nitrocellulose charge inside them proved unreliable in vacuum conditions and the lander rebounded off the ground before falling back.
COSAC detected sixteen organic compounds including acetamide acetone methyl isocyanate and propionaldehyde. Four of these molecules appeared for the first time on any comet according to final analysis results from the Philae lander instruments.
Mission controllers received an eighty-five-second transmission from Philae on the 13th of June 2015 at 20:28 UTC after months of silence. ESA officially switched off the Electrical Support System Processor Unit on the 27th of July 2016 at 09:00 UTC ending all contact possibilities.
Search teams identified Philae's resting place using images taken by Rosetta on the 2nd of September 2016 which revealed the probe wedged in a dark crevice beneath the shadow of a cliff or crater wall. Telemetry data combined with visual comparisons narrowed the search area to within tens of meters before confirmation.