Robot prepares for first-ever spacecraft landing on a comet

A fridge-sized robot lab hurtling through the Solar System aboard a European probe is about to wake from hibernation and prepare for the first-ever landing by a spacecraft on a comet.

The delicate operation, starting today, marks the next phase in the European Space Agency’s billion-dollar mission to explore one of these ancient wanderers of our star system.

Sent to sleep in 2011 to save energy, the lander will start a week’s long process of progressively waking up, checking and updating its systems ahead of its historic rendezvous with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.