A PROBE has been successfully landed on a comet - the first time such a feat has been achieved.

The Philae spacecraft has landed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and confirmed shortly after 4pm this afternoon.

The spider-like craft separated from its orbiting Rosetta mothership at 9.05am, snapping a photo of its parent lit up brightly by the Sun as they parted company.

Churyumov-Gerasimenko is a 2.5 mile-wide, rubber-duck shaped, rugged lump of ice and dust hurtling through space at around 40,000 mph.

It took mission controllers around 28 minutes to know if the craft and landed successfull due to the time it takes for a radio signal to travel 316 million miles to Earth.

It is the first time any man-made object has made a controlled landing on a comet.

Nine years ago, the US space agency Nasa's Deep Impact mission smashed a projectile into comet Tempel 1 to study debris from the blast.

Philae, in contrast, floated gently down at walking pace to the surface.

European Space Agency flight director Andrea Accomazzo said: ''We can't be happier than we are now. We have definitely confirmed that the lander is on the surface.''