PASADENA, Calif. – On its way to a 2014 rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft, with NASA instruments aboard, will fly past asteroid Lutetia this Saturday, July 10.
The instruments aboard Rosetta will record the first close-up image of a metal asteroid. They will also make measurements to help scientists derive the mass of the object, understand the properties of the asteroid’s surface crust, record the solar wind in the vicinity and look for evidence of an atmosphere. The spacecraft will pass the asteroid at a minimum distance of 3,160 kilometers (1,950 miles) and at a velocity of 15 kilometers (9 miles) per second.
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Heavy Metal Rock Set to Take the Stage – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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