Philae was last seen in 12 November 2014 as it closed in on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in an against-the-odds landing attempt that made worldwide headlines.

But instead of making a secure landing, the little robot's harpoons misfired and it bounced off the low-gravity space rock and flew for another two hours before ending up in a dark crevice.

It sent a few photographs of its rocky home but experts from the European Space Agency were only able to make educated guesses as to its position.

Unable to recharge its batteries through solar power, Philae managed three days of science, drilling into the comet, before going into hibernation. It was able only to send two more brief messages to the orbiting Rosetta in June and July last year.

In July the ESA announced there would be no more news from Philae. However with less than a month before the end of Rosetta's mission, the orbiter's high-resolution camera found the lander.

"We are so happy to have finally imaged Philae, and to see it in such amazing detail," said Cecilia Tubiana of the OSIRIS camera team, the first person to see the images when they were downlinked from Rosetta on Sunday.

Patrick Martin, ESA's Rosetta Mission Manager, said the team had been through a long, painstaking search. "We were beginning to think that Philae would remain lost forever. It is incredible we have captured this at the final hour," he said.

On September 30, the Rosetta orbiter will itself descend to the comet's surface, on a final one-way mission to peer into deep pits on the comet.

Scientists hope that mission will reveal the secrets of the comet's interior. Once it lands, the spacecraft will stop working.