Mission controllers cheer the first signal received from the Rosetta spacecraft on 20 January 2014. Rosetta had woken up 807 million km away after 31 months of deep-space hibernation. At ESA’s Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, mission controllers, ESA staff and press waited for the first sign of Rosetta’s revival.
Rosetta is chasing Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, where it will become the first mission to rendezvous with a comet, the first to land on a comet and the first to follow a comet around the Sun.
The greatest adventure in the Rosetta saga has just begun.