ESA will show approaching with the asteroid in the air.. / July 12, 2010 /

European Space Agency will be broadcasted live approaching spacecraft Rosetta with an asteroid 21 Lutetia. This is reported on the official website of the agency.

Broadcast will begin July 10 at 16:00 GMT (20:00 Moscow time) on a special page on the Internet. It is planned that the unit will be a distance of 3162 kilometers from the asteroid. Speed machine but will be about 15 kilometers per second.

Lutetia asteroid will be the largest (average diameter of about 95 kilometers) in history, with which ever came close spacecraft. Lutetia, opened back in 1852, in recent years is the interest astronomers because of the unusual characteristics of the spectrum of reflected radiation. In particular, because of these features, scientists can not determine the composition of the asteroid.

More recently, astronomers have proposed an explanation of these features. They suggested Lutetia — nonconvex body with linear dimensions of 132 by 101 by 76 kilometers (that is, on an asteroid, in fact, there is a giant crater), whose surface is covered with dust, with an average particle size of about 20 micrometers.

Convergence with Lutetium — this is not the main task of «Rosetta», launched in 2004, and the result of complex maneuvers on the solar system. The purpose of the maneuvers — to ensure that by 2014 the vehicle will accompany and be able to study in detail a comet Churyumova-Gerasimenko.

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