The first congratulatory message may have been in English, but the European Space Agency is tweeting "mission complete" in an array of languages from member nations.

Image source, ESA_Rosetta / Twitter

The mission's Twitter account tweets its success with an illustration - that's a fairy tale Rosetta holds for reading material, titled "once upon a time...".

The mission's been a success, say space controllers.

They confirm it's collided with the comet it's been chasing and studying.

"We've done it," said the European Space Agency.

The frequency carrier signal from Rosetta should have a large peak in its centre - as soon as that disappeared, a few claps and a muted cheer rose from the crowd at mission control.

It's assumed the spacecraft crashed into the comet - ending the signal right on time.

Image source, ESA

Rosetta has ended its mission to a comet. Contact with the spacecraft has been lost, marking the end of its quest.

Mission control briefly showed this rough grid of many of the photographs they've received, giving an overview of the area - but each image is, itself, a high-resolution one.

They'll stitch them together carefully later, creating a high-resolution surface image.

Image source, ESA/Rosetta

Could Rosetta follow the lead of the Philae lander, and bounce off the surface?

"It's a good possibility," Mark McCaughrean tells the live webcast from mission control. "But we won't know, because we turn off when we touch the surface."

"This is space, anything can happen out there."

The small marker in the bottom right of this photo marks Rosetta's final resting place, if all goes to plan.

Image source, European Space Agency

This is where they think it's landed.

Rosetta should have hit the comet, according to space controllers.

We should get confirmation within an hour.

Physicist Dr Paul Coxon has helpfully condensed the decade-long mission into a single tweet. 

It's been retweeted the European Space Agency account, too.

• Eleven scientific instruments to sniff and photograph the comet at all angles. 

• More than 100,000 images taken - with images up to the moment of impact.  

• Information on how the comet - the shape of a rubber duck - was formed. 

• Some surprises - the comet surface was harder than expected, with less water ice and lots of rocks

• Water - it's a different "flavour" than back on Earth

• The smell - scientists say it's a mixture of rotten eggs, horse urine, alcohol and bitter almonds.

Rosetta was never designed to land on the comet - but the mission team have decided to do it anyway.

Why? To end the mission "in a controlled and scientifically valuable way".

Rosetta’s moving alongside the comet away from the Sun – and that means it has less solar power to run things.

"Already, spacecraft operators are having to share the power between the instruments because not all of them can be switched on at the same time any more," Esa said.

"In the absence of sufficient power, further out on its orbit around the Sun, the remaining fuel in the spacecraft would freeze."

So before that happens, the Rosetta team will try to put it down on the comet – and learn what they can.

The spacecraft has taken this picture from 5.8km away.

Image source, ESA