Categories: AsteroidsMissions

Watch Live Webcast of Rosetta Flyby of Asteroid Lutetia July 10

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.

Watch live streaming video from eurospaceagency at livestream.com

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.

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Rosetta is on its way to a 2014 rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/