Another milestone day in Rosetta’s journey, this time right here on Earth, at ESOC! The Philae lander hardware simulator arrived at ESOC today, carefully shepherded by a team of our colleagues from DLR. It is now being installed in the clean room beside the giant, life-size Rosetta engineering model (EQM).

Armelle Hubault, from the Rosetta Flight Control Team at ESOC, says that the two models will be connected together and then the ESA/DLR teams will begin extensive testing of the software that has been newly developed for Rosetta, to ensure it works properly with the lander.