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Europe's Rosetta probe has arrived at a comet after a 10-year chase.

In a first for space history, the spacecraft was manoeuvred alongside a speeding body to begin mapping its surface in detail.

The spacecraft fired its thrusters for six and a half minutes to finally catch up with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

"We're at the comet!" said Sylvain Lodiot of the European Space Agency (Esa) operations centre in Germany.

"After 10 years, five months and four days travelling towards our destination, looping around the Sun five times and clocking up 6.4 billion km, we are delighted to announce finally 'we are here'," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of Esa.

The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch an experimental space plane this Wednesday to test out technologies needed for vehicles to survive the return to Earth from space.

The unmanned space plane, called the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV), is slated to blast off Wednesday (Feb. 11) at 8 a.m. EST (1300 GMT) from French Guiana. Its suborbital flight will last 100 minutes. But first, the reusable spacecraft must separate from the rocket by itself while out of contact with Earth. (You can watch the IXV liftoff live here on Space.com, courtesy of ESA.)

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst performs a demonstration of how ESA's Rosetta mission will attempt to put a lander, called 'Philae' on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Alexander narrates the story of the Rosetta mission and performs a demonstration that visualises the difficulties of landing on an object that has little gravitational pull. Using the weightless environment of the Space Station, Alexander attempts to land 'Philae' (an ear plug) onto the surface of the 'comet' (an inactive SPHERES robot) with increasing levels of difficulty: a rotating comet that is not moving to one that is both rotating and moving.

This video is one of the six experiments and demonstrations in the Flying Classroom, Alexander will use small items to demonstrate several principles of physics in microgravity to students aged 10-17 years.

The Rosetta mission's lander, Philae, will be deployed on 12 November at 08:35 GMT/09:35 CET from a distance of 22.5 km from the centre of the comet. It will land about seven hours later, with confirmation expected to arrive at Earth at around 16:00 GMT/17:00 CET.

ESA's Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle is ready for its launch and reentry mission on 11 February. The launch is scheduled for 13:00 GMT (14:00 CET) atop a Vega rocket from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. Streaming starts at 12:45 GMT (13:45 CET)

This IXV mission will test cutting-edge system and technology aspects to provide Europe with an independent reentry capability, and a building block for reusable space transportation systems. It will validate designs for lifting-bodies, incorporating both the simplicity of capsules and the performance of winged vehicles, with high controllability and manoeuvrability for precision landing.

The Philae lander has attempted to drill into the surface of comet 67/P, amid fears that its battery may die in hours.

Researchers at Esa say the instrument is being deployed to its maximum extent despite the risk of toppling the lander.

Scientists hope they will also be able to capture some samples for analysis in the robot's onboard laboratories.

If the battery dies the results may not make it back to Earth.

Whatever the outcome, and the science returned, there will always be questions about the costs of such missions and whether they can be justified in the current financial climate.

On Twitter, Dr Taylor responded to just such a question by borrowing a catchphrase from the irascible BA Baracus character played by Mr T in the A-Team television show: "I pity the fool."

Thomas Reiter, director of human spaceflight and operations at Esa, acknowledged how the top line figure of 1.4bn euros appeared.

But he explained: "If you divide it by the 20 years that the development and the mission has cost, it's about cents per European citizen per year that was contributing to this new knowledge."