Video Kidibot

Tag: Lutetia

  • Rosetta — the story so far

    Rosetta — the story so far

    This short movie tells the story of Rosetta’s journey through the Solar System so far, through the voices of some of the many people involved in this exciting mission. ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft launched in March 2004 and has since been chasing down comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, where it will become the first space mission to orbit a comet, the first to attempt a landing on a comet’s surface, and the first to follow a comet as it swings around the Sun. In the last ten years Rosetta has made 3 flybys of Earth and 1 of Mars, and passed by and imaged asteroids Steins and Lutetia. Operating on solar energy alone, in June 2011 Rosetta was placed into deep space hibernation as it cruised nearly 800 million kilometres from the warmth of the Sun, close to the orbit of Jupiter. On 20 January, Rosetta will wake up at 673 million kilometres from the Sun and about 9 million km from the comet, ready for the next leg of its epic adventure.

    Credits: ESA

  • Rosetta’s view of Lutetia, July 2010

    Rosetta’s view of Lutetia, July 2010

    This movie shows a sequence of images taken as ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft flew past the main-belt asteroid (21) Lutetia, during the spacecraft’s 10-year journey towards comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

    The flyby took place on 10 July 2010, when Rosetta flew past the asteroid at a distance of 3168.2 km and at a relative speed of 15 km/s. The first image shown in the sequence was taken nine and a half hours before closest approach, from a distance of 500 000 km to Lutetia; the last image was taken six minutes after closest approach, at 6300 km from the asteroid.

    The OSIRIS camera on board Rosetta has surveyed the part of Lutetia that was visible during the flyby – about half of its entire surface, mostly coinciding with the asteroid’s northern hemisphere. These unique, close-up images have allowed scientists to study the asteroid’s surface morphology, composition and other properties in unprecedented detail.