Rosetta's long journey from here to a comet (pictures)

On November 12, the European Space Agency is set to detach the Philae lander from the Rosetta spacecraft to attempt the first-ever landing on a comet.

The journey to this moment is more than a decade in the making. This picture from 2002 shows Rosetta receiving vibration tests in the months leading up to launch. Back then, the plan was an eight-year flight to comet 46P/Wirtanen. But when launch was delayed, the mission had to be re-focused on its current target, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Click through this gallery to follow Rosetta's remarkable road trip across the cosmos.

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Drifting through open space, it can be hard to get a sense of scale. This shot of Rosetta's solar collecting wings from June 2002 actually shows just how big this comet-conquering craft is.

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Another shot from 2002 shows just how big the Philae lander actually is. It's the smaller craft suspended from the ceiling. Rosetta is to the right with its communication dish facing the floor.

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This image from the European Southern Observatory taken in January 2004 shows comet 67P/Churyumov/Gerasimenko as seen from Earth. We now have a much better idea of how it really looks thanks to Rosetta. Keep flipping forward for this comet's close-up.

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After 13 months of delays, Rosetta finally blasted off in March 2004 from Kourou, French Guiana. At the time of launch, Facebook was just a  month old, YouTube did not yet exist, and the launch of iPhone was nearly three years away.

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Taken from the Philae lander attached to Rosetta, this image from the early part of the mission shows the craft near its closest approach to Mars, with an awesome shot of the Red Planet below.

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On its way to its eventual destination, Rosetta did some sightseeing. This is a close-up of an asteroid named Lutetia in the main asteroid belt from a 2011 fly-by.

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Rosetta went into deep space hibernation for the final part of its journey to conserve power, sleeping through half of 2011 and all of 2012 and 2013. Finally, on January 20, 2014, mission controllers cheered when they received the first signal from the newly awoken spacecraft half a billion miles from Earth.

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Rosetta's equipment made the first sighting of its target after waking up in March of this year. The comet seen from a distance is circled in the image.

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When Rosetta finally arrived at its destination in August, it began months of mapping the comet to begin selecting an ideal landing spot for Philae. The comet turned out to have an irregular shape like a long-suffering butterfly or kidney.

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This mashup shows the scale of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko as compared with the layout of the city of Paris.

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For the past few months, Rosetta has been obsessively circling and mapping the comet, as this still from an animation shows.

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After considering several candidate sites, this spot was chosen as Philae's landing site.

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The newly named Agilkia landing site in all its glory. If all goes well, humanity will plant its flag here within a day of this writing. Getting chills yet? Follow along with us!

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