Paris - The European Space Agency put Europe on the space exploration map by landing a probe on a comet. After years of crisis that left many Europeans badly disenchanted, the Old Continent has finally regained some stellar star power.
A “big step for human civilisation,” was how the director general of the European Space Agency (ESA), Jean-Jacques Dordain, described Europe's historic achievement of landing a probe on the surface of a comet Wednesday.
But for the European press and political class, it was bigger than “big.”
According to British newspaper The Guardian, landing a robot on a dusty ice ball hurtling through space at up to 135,000 kilometres an hour is “on a par with being first to circumnavigate the globe or climb the world's highest mountain.”
France's Liberation daily drew parallels with Neil Armstrong's 1969 moon landing with a headline that read, “A giant leap for Philae (the probe), a real step for humanity.”
On Wednesday, stargazers across the continent watched transfixed as Rosetta, the satellite launched 10 years ago in pursuit of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, sent its Philae probe for a deep space rendezvous with the air of a parent sending a child off to college.
Twitter accounts created by the ESA turned the probe and the spacecraft into talking characters, helping global audiences stay connected to the story.
During the Twitter dialogue, Rosetta asks Philae, as the probe began its seven-hour freefall towards the comet: “How are you feeling?”
Philae responds: “Finally! I'm stretching my legs after more than 10 years.”
No sooner had the probe landed than the praise began pouring in for the roughly 2 000 scientists from across Europe, from Muenster to Madrid, who had helped ESA break new ground in space exploration, putting it on the same level as US space agency Nasa.
But there were nervous moments still to come with reports that the harpoons designed to anchor Philae to the comet's surface failed to deploy during landing, causing it to bounce twice before finding its footing on a ledge.
Throughout Thursday morning, broadcasters across Europe remained glued to Darmstadt for news from 67P, as the comet has been nicknamed.
“We're crossing our fingers for Rosetta,” a BBC radio host said.
It has been a long time since a European project generated such reverie.
Several politicians and newspapers hailed the mission as proof of what the much-maligned Old Continent could achieve when it pooled its skills and resources.
“For those who ask themselves what purpose Europe serves, Rosetta has given the best answer,” said French President Francois Hollande, whose pro-European Socialists were trounced by the anti-EU National Front in May elections to the European Parliament.
“Europe has shown that it can do much more than argue about crooked cucumbers, minimum condom sizes or the electrical conductivity of honey,” the Frankfurter Neue Presse newspaper opined.
For Anne Glover, the EU's chief science advisor, the achievement was the stuff of science fiction.
“I think Europe just boldly went where no one else has gone before,” she wrote, quoting Star Trek.
But there was no rush of continental blood to the head for British Prime Minister David Cameron.
In his message of congratulations on the mission's success, Cameron, who has promised an in/out referendum on Britain's EU membership if re-elected in May, put the emphasis on his country's contribution to the mission.
“Congratulations to (at)ESA_Rosetta & UK figures who played a key role,” Cameron wrote on Twitter.
The Independent newspaper remarked that it was “through the ESA” that the UK Space agency got “a place at the table, or on the spacecraft.”
“None of the nations involved could have hoped to achieve this goal single-handedly,” the paper said, praising the 20-member ESA as a “perfect illustration of the value of European cooperation.”
What's certain is that no single European country could have afforded the mission's 1.4-billion-euro price tag.
Unlike many of ESA's commercial satellite missions, Rosetta offers no obvious bang for the ESA members' bucks. Its ambitions are far loftier: By studying the 4.6-billion-year-old comet, the ESA hopes to “unlock the mysteries of how the solar system evolved.” - Sapa-dpa