Rosetta meets Lutetia

Some of the first released high-resolution images of 21 Lutetia taken by Rosetta (images: ESA) The Rosetta close encounter with asteroid 21 Lutetia early yesterday evening was certainly a big success. The first images are very impressive and there is a lot more data to follow in the coming weeks. Based on the initial images,…

Asteroid Encounter – Here’s Looking at You Kid

Artist’s impression of Rosetta close encounter with asteroid 21 Lutetia (Image: ESA) The Rosetta spacecraft is due to make history tomorrow (10 July at 17:10 BST )* when it will fly past the asteroid 21 Lutetia at a distance of 3162 km. 21 Lutetia, which is about 100 km in diameter, will be the largest…

Inspiration

While looking up a few details about the Rosetta flyby, I came across a space poem called Fly-past. My first reaction was to be a bit flippant about the whole idea of space poetry. If an earlier version of this post I brought up the spectre of Douglas Adams’ Vogons. But having given it a…

Non-Identical Twins

Not quite Venus! Somewhere nice in Aussois, France (image Maurienne-tourisme) We may have to wait a bit before we have samples from Venus (see last entry), but that doesn’t stop us finding out a lot more about our twin planet, thanks to ESA’s Venus Express probe. Twin planet! Well I guess that’s pushing it a…