Final moments of Philae lander pieced together by scientists

The European Space Agency has pieced together the final movements of its doomed Philae lander, which crashed to its death in 2014.

The spacecraft was supposed to descend to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and land on its surface, with the aim of doing research on the object when it did.

But that touchdown went wrong, sending the spacecraft bouncing into space until it fell to its final resting place. Its last location was not identified for 22 months, when Philae was spotted in images from the Rosetta orbiter that stayed floating around the comet.

Still, one mystery remained about those dramatic last moments of Philae. As it dropped to the comet, it hit its initial touchdown surface and then bounced up a mile into the air, taking a two-hour flight, colliding with a cliff edge and tumbling towards a second location.