Watch Live Webcast of Rosetta Flyby of Asteroid Lutetia July 10

By Nancy Atkinson - July 9, 2010 at 12:35 PM UTC | Missions
rosetta.jpg

[/caption] 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.

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

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com