Launched in 2004, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta space probe, orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in the outer solar system, releases the Philae robotic lander to descend to 67P’s surface. The lander’s harpoon anchoring system doesn’t work entirely as expected, and Philae bounces off the surface and goes spaceborne again for two hours before coming to rest on the comet once more. Though Philae is able to gather scientific data and the first-ever pictures from a comet’s surface, the nearby geography prevents its solar panels from keeping its batteries at a full charge; ESA ground controllers are only able to intermittently contact Philae.
A television producer with an improbably long list of mega-hit series, including the science fiction shows 
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The sixth episode of The Flash, a modern-day reboot of DC Comics’ superhero starring Grant Gustin, airs on the CW.
The 53rd episode of Arrow, a modern-day reboot of DC Comics’ Green Arrow superhero starring Stephen Amell, airs on the CW.
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The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launches the Hayabusa-2 unmanned space probe, intended to study and sample asteroid 162173 Ryugu in 2018. Mission plans call for the ion-engine-powered Hayabusa-2 to remain at Ryugu for a year before returning to Earth with its sample. Hayabusa-2 also carries a European-built lander and an explosive penetrator to expose the asteroid’s subsurface material (using the same principle as the Deep Impact mission to Comet Tempel 1 in 2005.
NASA launches Exploration Flight Test 1, the maiden unmanned voyage of the next-generation Orion space vehicle which is intended to assume the Space Shuttle’s place as NASA’s primary manned spacecraft. Heavily instrumented, Orion is boosted to a high altitude of 3,600 miles during its second orbit, and returns to Earth at 20,000mph, the fastest return of a man-rated spacecraft since the Apollo lunar missions. The flight profile of the EFT-1 mission is similar to that of 1967’s 
Four-time Emmy winning film and TV director Joseph Sargent, who directed the influential Star Trek episode 
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The first episode of the Marvel Cinematic Universe series Agent Carter, starring Hayley Attwell as Agent Peggy Carter (a character she established in 2011’s Marvel movie Captain America: The First Avenger), premieres on ABC. James Frain (Tron Legacy, Star Trek: Discovery) guest stars.
JAXA, the Japanese space agency, announces its plans to put the unmanned AKATSUKI space probe into orbit around Venus. Originally launched in 2010, AKATSUKI failed to orbit the planet in December of that year due to a critical engine malfunction and instead fell into an orbit around the sun, but mission planners have devised a strategy to use its attitude control engines to slow it enough to be captured around Venus when it intersects the planet’s orbit again. AKATSUKI, more formally known as the Venus Climate Orbiter, is intended to study the atmosphere and weather of Venus, a mission it will begin in December if it can successfully enter orbit.
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Actor Barrie Ingham, one of the few actors to have played speaking parts in both the Doctor Who and Star Trek franchises, dies at the age of 82. Having appeared alongside William Hartnell in the 1965 
The unmanned NASA spacecraft Dawn transmits a series of pictures of Ceres, the minor planet which is the largest known object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, back to Earth, representing the best view yet of an object which had been seen as little more than a point of light since its discovery in 1801. From a distance of only 147,000 miles, Dawn is able to see more detail on Ceres than the best Hubble Space Telescope images of the same body. Dawn will arrive at Ceres and use its ion propulsion system to enter its orbit in March 2015.