July 1, 1997
The atoms in your body have known many forms: star core, drifting dust, ocean mineral, living cell.
Asteroid 253 Mathilde:'s Large Craters
Birthday · July 1, 1997
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 July 1, 1997. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
You're zipping through the Solar System when you pass ... asteroid 253 Mathilde. This actually happened to NASA's NEAR spacecraft just last Friday. The above picture of the previously unresolved asteroid was released just yesterday. Mathilde's large craters and irregular shape indicates that it has undergone huge collisions with other large space rocks in the past. Mathilde has more large craters than asteroids 243 Ida and 951 Gaspra, which were photographed by the Galileo spacecraft now orbiting Jupiter. In the image center is a crater over 20 kilometers across. Asteroids are rare enough so that spacecraft traveling through even the main asteroid belt need not fear colliding with any - let alone one as large as Mathilde.