The Rosetta spacecraft ended its historic mission on Friday, September 30 crashing on the surface of the dusty, icy comet it has spent 12 years chasing in a hunt that has provided insight into the early days of the solar system and captured the public's imagination, Reuters reports.

The spacecraft has stalked comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko across more than 6 billion km (3.7 billion miles) of space, collecting a treasure trove of information on comets that will keep scientists busy for the next decade.

Scientists in the European Space Agency control center in Darmstadt, Germany, clapped and hugged as confirmation of the end of the mission came at 1119 GMT.

Rosetta completed its free-fall descent at the speed of a sedate walk, joining the probe Philae, which landed on the comet in November 2014 in what was considered a remarkable feat of precision space travel.

"Thank you Rosetta," ESA director general Jan Woerner said on Twitter.

He was among some 300 people who had also gathered before dawn at a conference room at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, to watch a live webcast as Rosetta's signal disappeared from monitors, simultaneously with the team in Germany.

"It was a good ending," Klaus Schiling, who worked on mission planning for Rosetta 27 years ago with prime contractor Airbus (AIR.PA), told Reuters at the Mexico space conference. "There were so many ups and downs with this mission."