Press Play or drag the progress slider to fly ESA's real Rosetta and Philae mission at comet 67P - orbit insertion, the first-ever landing on a comet nucleus, perihelion, and the controlled descent that ended the mission.
Rosetta + Philae 67P 3D Explorer
Scrub the progress slider to fly ESA's real Rosetta and Philae mission at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko: orbit insertion on August 6, 2014, the first-ever landing on a comet nucleus on November 12, 2014, perihelion on August 13, 2015, and Rosetta's own controlled descent that ended the mission on September 30, 2016.
Drag to orbit the view, scroll or pinch to zoom, and press Play or Pause to animate the timeline. Drag the progress slider to jump straight to any of the seven real mission milestones, or click the comet, Rosetta, or the Philae lander to refresh the facts panel.
The facts panel lists the real published dates and figures: launch on March 2, 2004; orbit insertion at the comet on August 6, 2014; Philae's separation and descent on November 12, 2014, first touching down at a site named Agilkia at 17:32 GMT that day - but the anchoring harpoons failed to fire, so the lander bounced about four times over roughly two hours before coming to rest at a different site, later named Abydos; the comet's closest approach to the Sun on August 13, 2015, when outgassing jets are strongest; and the mission's end on September 30, 2016, when Rosetta made its own controlled descent onto a pit in the Ma'at region nicknamed Deir el-Medina.
- Procedural two-lobed comet nucleus built from two overlapping bumped spheres, matching 67P's real "contact binary" shape
- Play or Pause animates the full mission timeline; the progress slider jumps to any point directly
- Philae visibly separates from Rosetta, descends, bounces between the Agilkia and Abydos landing sites, and comes to rest - the real bounce-and-recovery story, not a clean touchdown
- A perihelion note and particle jets appear near the comet's closest approach to the Sun, showing the real increase in outgassing activity
- Click the comet, Rosetta, or the Philae lander to refresh the facts panel with the current mission milestone
- Real published ESA dates, distances, and mission figures in the panel; nucleus shape and orbit paths are compressed and disclosed
- Runs fully in the browser with the vendored three.js engine - no account, no upload
Students use it to see why the first landing on a comet did not go as planned, and how mission teams recovered a working lander anyway; teachers point to the two-lobed nucleus shape when explaining how comets can form from two smaller bodies sticking together; and curious readers scrub straight to the mission's end to see how a spacecraft's own controlled fall became the final data-gathering opportunity.
| Quantity | Published value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Launch | 2004-03-02 | ESA Rosetta mission page |
| Orbit insertion at comet 67P | 2014-08-06 | ESA Rosetta mission page |
| Philae first touchdown (Agilkia) | 2014-11-12, 17:32 GMT - harpoons failed to fire, lander bounced | ESA "Touchdown! Rosetta's Philae probe lands on comet" |
| Philae final rest site | Abydos, on the comet's small lobe, after about four surface contacts | ESA "Philae's extraordinary comet landing relived" |
| Comet perihelion | 2015-08-13 | ESA Rosetta mission page |
| Mission end | 2016-09-30, controlled descent onto "Deir el-Medina" (Ma'at region), loss of signal 11:19 UTC | ESA "Mission complete: Rosetta's journey ends in daring descent to comet" |
| Mission totals at the comet | 786 days in space, 7.9 billion km traveled, 100k+ images, 220 GB of data | ESA Rosetta mission page |
| Comet 67P nucleus | Two-lobed contact binary: large lobe about 4.1 x 3.3 x 1.8 km, small lobe about 2.6 x 2.3 x 1.8 km | NASA Solar System Exploration 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko fact page |
| Rosetta orbiter | About 2,900 kg; twin solar wings spanning 32 m (largest interplanetary solar arrays at the time) | ESA Rosetta factsheet |
| Philae lander | About 100 kg (21 kg of science instruments), roughly 1 x 1 x 0.8 m | ESA Rosetta factsheet / Philae (spacecraft) |
Everything renders on your device with WebGL. The 3D engine loads once (about 0.7 MB) and is cached; no scene data is sent to a server.
The scene is an educational approximation of the Rosetta and Philae mission arc, not a precomputed ephemeris of the real trajectory and not a contact-dynamics solver of Philae's bounce. The comet's two-lobed shape, orbit path, descent arc, and landing-site positions are simplified for legibility - the table above holds the real published dates, distances, and figures.
For a step-by-step walkthrough, read the Rosetta + Philae 67P 3D Explorer how-to guide. The Space 3D collection also includes a Hayabusa2 Ryugu Sample Return explorer for a different small-body mission technique and a Comet Orbit explorer for the general orbital mechanics behind why comets like 67P become active near the Sun.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the Rosetta + Philae 67P 3D Explorer show?
A procedural flight path threading ESA's real Rosetta and Philae mission from orbit insertion at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August 2014 through the first-ever landing on a comet nucleus to the mission's controlled-descent ending in September 2016. Scrub the progress slider or press Play to move through the timeline, and the panel lists the published dates and figures for each milestone.
Did Philae land safely on the comet?
Not cleanly. When Philae touched down on November 12, 2014, its anchoring harpoons failed to fire, so the lander bounced off the low-gravity surface and made about four contacts over roughly two hours before coming to rest at a different site later named Abydos. Despite the rough landing, Philae still returned science data from the surface.
Why does the comet have two lobes?
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is a "contact binary" - mission scientists concluded its two lobes were likely once two separate smaller bodies that gently stuck together at low speed early in the Solar System's history, rather than one body that eroded into that shape.
How did the Rosetta mission end?
On September 30, 2016, after more than two years studying the comet from orbit, Rosetta carried out its own controlled descent onto a pit in the comet's Ma'at region, nicknamed "Deir el-Medina", taking close-up images on the way down. Mission control confirmed loss of signal, meaning impact, at 11:19 UTC.
What happens to the comet near perihelion?
As comet 67P approaches its closest point to the Sun (perihelion, reached on August 13, 2015), solar heating drives stronger jets of gas and dust off the nucleus. The explorer shows this real increase in activity as particle bursts near that point in the timeline.
Is this a real-time tracker or a physics simulation?
No. The flight path, comet shape, and landing-site positions are a parametric teaching approximation tuned to show the real launch, landing, perihelion, and mission-end milestones in the correct order - not a precomputed ephemeris or a contact-dynamics solver of Philae's bounce. The panel and the table on the main page hold the real published ESA dates, distances, and figures.