April 24, 2012
Even the most precise clock in the world cannot measure how unlikely your existence really is.
Rosetta Approaches Asteroid Lutetia
Birthday · April 24, 2012
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
Free PNG · 1080 × 1350 · No account needed
Image rights and credit requirements apply when sharing or reusing imagery.
Date & occasion only
Change the year
APOD published April 24, 2012 · Video still. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
What would it look like to approach an asteroid in a spaceship? In 2010, ESA's robotic Rosetta spacecraft zipped past the asteroid 21 Lutetia taking data and snapping images in an effort to better determine the history of the asteroid and the origin of its unusual colors. Recently, many images from a camera always facing the asteroid were compiled into the above video. Although of unknown composition, Lutetia is not massive enough for gravity to pull it into a sphere. The 100-kilometer across Lutetian was at that time the largest asteroid or comet nucleus that had been visited by a human-launched spacecraft. Orbiting in the main asteroid belt, Lutetia shows itself to be a heavily cratered remnant of the early Solar System. Now well past Lutetia, the Rosetta spacecraft is continuing onto comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko where a landing is planned for 2014.