Rosetta captured this image of asteroid (21) Lutetia on July 9, 2010, at 01:00 UTC, when the spacecraft was still about two million kilometers (and 36 hours) from the asteroid. Credit: ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team
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On July 10, ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft will fly past 21 Lutetia, the largest asteroid ever visited by a satellite. After weeks of maneuvers and optical observations, Rosetta is perfectly lined up to skim by the asteroid only 3,162 km (2,000 miles) away. ESA is hosting a live webcast at 16:00 GMT on July 10. Below is an embedded feed that will go live once the webcast begins.
For more information and a complete timeline of events, check out this ESA web page.
Rosetta is expected to pass Lutetia at a relative speed of 54,000 km/hr. All this takes place 454 million km from Earth. Lutetia is a major scientific target of Rosetta’s mission, so most of the orbiter and lander instruments will be on for flyby, studying the asteroid’s surface, dust environment, exosphere, magnetic field, mass and density.
Rosetta is on its way to a 2014 rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
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