ESA Rosetta mission: Philae Lander successfully lands on comet 67/P

European ESA Rosetta probes's robot lander, Philae has made the first, historic landing on a comet, after descending from its mothership.

The lander touched down on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at about 1605 GMT.

There were cheers and hugs at the control room in Darmstadt, Germany, after the signal was confirmed.

It was designed to shine a light on some of the mysteries of these icy relics from the formation of the Solar System.

The landing caps a 6.4 billion-kilometre journey that was begun a decade ago.

"This is a big step for human civilisation," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, the director-general of the European Space Agency (Esa).

Shortly after the touchdown was confirmed, Stephan Ulamec, the mission's lander chief, said: "Philae is talking to us... we are on the comet."

The robot deployed harpoons to fasten itself to the 2.5-mile-wide ball of ice and dust.

Scientists will use Philae to take pictures of the comet's landscape and to analyse its chemical composition.

They are hoping the its surface materials will hold fresh insights into the origins of our Solar System more than 4.5 billion years ago.

Boeing X37B, US Top Secret Spy Plane lands after 674 days in Orbit

This June 16, 2012 file image from video made available by the Vandenberg Air Force Base shows an infrared view of the Boeing X-37B unmanned spacecraft landing at Vandenberg Air Force Base. 

The purpose of the U.S. military's space plane is classified, only fueling speculation about why it has been orbiting Earth for nearly two years on this, its third mission. 

The plane is expected to land this week at a Southern California Air Force base. 

Credit: AP Photo /Vandenberg Air Force Base

A top-secret space plane landed Friday at an Air Force base on the Southern California coast.

The plane spent nearly two years circling Earth on a classified mission. Known as the Boeing X-37B, it resembles a mini space shuttle.

It safely touched down at 9:24 a.m. Friday, officials at Vandenberg Air Force Base said.

Just what the plane was doing during its 674 days in orbit has been the subject of sometimes spectacular speculation.

Several experts have theorized it carried a payload of spy gear in its cargo bay.

Other theories sound straight out of a James Bond film, including that the spacecraft would be able to capture the satellites of other nations or shadow China's space lab.

In a written release announcing the return of the craft, the Air Force only said it had been conducting "on-orbit experiments."

The Boeing X-37B program has been an orphan of sorts, bouncing since its inception in 1999 between several federal agencies, NASA among them. It now resides under the Air Force's Rapid Capabilities Office.

The plane that landed Friday is one of two built by Boeing. This is the program's third mission, and began in December 2012.

The plane stands 9 1/2 feet tall and is just over 29 feet long, with a wingspan under 15 feet. It weighs 11,000 pounds and has solar panels that unfurl to charge its batteries once in orbit.

The Air Force said it plans to launch the fourth Boeing X-37B mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida, next year.

NASA Orion Space Capsule Lands With Two of Three Parachutes

The Orion capsule falls to Earth with parachutes deployed at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, on July 24, 2013.

Credit: NASA TV

NASA's Orion capsule, planned to be the space agency's next manned spaceship, safely landed during a flight test today (July 24) using just two of its three parachutes.

The test was the 10th in a series of maneuvers to check out Orion's parachute system, which will slow the vehicle down as it plummets through Earth's atmosphere on return trips from space.

Orion is designed to carry astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit to nearby asteroids, the moon, and eventually Mars.

The spacecraft is due to make its first test flight to space in 2014 in a mission called the Exploration Flight Test-1, and its initial crewed flight around 2021.

During today's flight test, an Orion prototype was dropped from a plane 35,000 feet (10,700 meters) over the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground in southwestern Arizona.

It was the highest elevation that the capsule has been dropped from; previous tests saw mock Orion capsules released from a maximum of 25,000 feet (7,600 meters).

"The closer we can get to actual flight conditions, the more confidence we gain in the system," Chris Johnson, project manager for the Orion capsule parachute assembly system at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in a statement.

"What we saw today — other than the failures we put in on purpose — is very similar to what Orion will look like coming back during Exploration Flight Test-1's Earth entry next year."

Orion is equipped with three parachutes to slow its fall, but is designed to need only two of them.

During today's test, engineers simulated the failure of one chute to confirm that the other two were adequate.

The team caused one parachute to fail during the descent to understand the effects of a chute pulling away in mid-flight.

"We wanted to know what would happen if a cable got hooked around a sharp edge and snapped off when the parachutes deployed," Stu McClung, Orion's landing and recovery system manager at Johnson, said in a statement.

"We don't think that would ever happen, but if it did, would it cause other failures? We want to know everything that could possibly go wrong, so that we can fix it before it does."

NASA ISS Expedition 30 Crew Land safely in Kazakhstan - Video

Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank is carried to a medical tent after being extracted from the Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft (Credits: NASA).

The Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft carrying Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin landed in Kazakhstan at 7:45 a.m. EDT. They undocked from the International Space Station at 4:18 a.m. EDT officially ending their stay.

The Soyuz performed a deorbit burn at 6:49 a.m. before the descent module separated from the rest of the Russian spacecraft and entered the Earth’s atmosphere. Afterward, the Soyuz deployed several parachutes, slowing its descent, and then fired three small engines to soften its landing.

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First Indian (ISRO) Astronaut Lands safely

Sorry, guys. Just kidding!

Rajaram Das, a Sadhu or a Hindu holyman, performs yoga in a dry pond in the northern Indian city of Mathura, as part of a ritual to appease Indra, the Hindu rain god, for rain

Shuttle Atlantis lands safely at Florida runway 33