Date: 05 Jul 2010
Copyright: ESA

Simulation of the Rosetta flyby of asteroid Lutetia.

Data from the JPL Horizons system were used to generate this animation illustrating the orbit of Rosetta (green line) and asteroids Steins and Lutetia (orange lines). It starts shortly before the last Earth gravity assist (in November 2009) and continues through the Lutetia flyby to the end of 2010.

The closest approach between Rosetta and asteroid Lutetia is predicted to be on 10 July 2010 at 16:10 UTC. At this time the spacecraft will be an estimated 3169 km from the asteroid and will fly past at a relative speed of 15 km/s.

Rosetta is scheduled to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (seen briefly in this animation) in May 2014.