LANDING with a bounce after traveling 4 billion miles (6.437 billion kilometers), a European spacecraft made history Wednesday by successfully reaching the icy, dusty surface of a speeding comet — a cosmic first designed to answer big questions about the universe.

    The landing by the washing machine-sized craft after a decade-long journey required immense precision, as even the slightest error could have resulted in stellar calamity.

    Indications were that the spacecraft touched down almost perfectly, save for an unplanned bounce, said Stephan Ulamec, head of the lander operation.

    Ulamec said thrusters that were meant to push the lander, called Philae, onto the surface, and harpoons that would have anchored it to the comet failed to deploy properly. Initial data from the spacecraft indicated that it lifted off again, turned and then came to rest.

    Scientists were still trying to fully understand what happened and whether those failures would affect the lander’s ability to remain on the comet, called 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

    The landing team at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, had to sweat through a tense seven-hour wait that began when Philae dropped from the agency’s Rosetta space probe as both it and the comet hurtled through space at 66,000 kph.

    Finally, at 16:03 GMT, the agency received a signal that the lander had touched down.

    The head of the European Space Agency underlined Europe’s pride in having achieved a unique first ahead of its U.S. counterpart, NASA.

    (SD-Agencies)