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Bruce Willis won't be visiting this asteroid, but the European Space Agency will

The European Space Agency's unmanned Rosetta spacecraft will perform a flyby of asteroid Lutetia on July 10.

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Newscom/File
The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft will not be carrying Bruce Willis 鈥� or anyone else 鈥� as it performs a flyby of asteroid Lutetia.
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ESA/Newscom/File
Rosetta ready to probe asteroid Lutetia
  • By Jack Kennedy Spaceports

The European Space Agency (ESA) will have a close encouter with an asteroid by way of the Rosetta spacecraft coming close to on 10 July, 18:00鈥�23:00 with the first images being made available from ESA鈥檚 , Germany prior to 24:00 there.

ESA鈥檚 Rosetta comet-chaser is en route to its main target, comet arriving in 2014. On Saturday, 10 July it will fly past the previously unvisited asteroid Lutetia.

Lutetia will be the second asteroid studied during Rosetta鈥檚 journey. The [video] took place on 5 September 2008, approaching to within 800 km.

Lutetia is a much bigger asteroid, so the flyby will be no closer than about 3200 km. Any nearer and Rosetta would not be able to fit the whole asteroid into the camera鈥檚 field of view.

Jack Kennedy blogs at .

View all of Spaceports posts on the Monitor.

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