Astronomy Blog » Rosetta Meets Lutetia http://www.astronomyinfoblog.com Astronomy Fan Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:19:59 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 Rosetta Meets Lutetia http://www.astronomyinfoblog.com/archives/rosetta-meets-lutetia/ http://www.astronomyinfoblog.com/archives/rosetta-meets-lutetia/#comments Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:15:42 +0000 admin http://www.astronomyinfoblog.com/?p=116
The ESA spacecraft Rosetta is usually a comet chaser launched in February 2004 atop the effective ArianeLJ rocket from launch facilities in French Guiana. The comet Rosetta is ultimately going to reach is CometೃP/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in Might 2014.

You’d thing that large rocket would send the comparatively tiny spacecraft appropriate to the comet, but that’s just not the way things work. Rosetta is having to take kind of the long way around, including two trips into the asteroid belt and taking benefit of gravitational speed boosts by a flyby of Mars (in 2007) and three flybys of Earth (2005, 2007 and 2009). If you’ve ever been on a long ride with children inside back seat you know the drill, instead ESA has people like me in the back seat going “are we there however “ are we there however?”).

It is a fine thing for us in just about every prolonged trip you’ll find bound to be some worthwhile sights along the way and in this case it’s an asteroid named Lutetia. The image above can be a shot of Rosetta leaving Lutetia and if you appear close or better yet click on the picture to make it larger you’ll see Saturn inside background.

It is possible to see this image and much more including close ups at Science@NASA and even more at the ESA Rosetta webpage.

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