Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Asteroid Lutia shows her face

July 14, 2010: The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft has beamed back close-up photographs of asteroid Lutetia, an ancient, cratered relic from the dawn of the solar system. Scientists are abuzz about the stunning images, which reveal a worldlet of haunting, alien beauty.

"I've never seen anything like it," says Claudia Alexander, project scientist for the U.S. Rosetta Project. "It looked as though it could have been fractured off of a mother asteroid – it was all angles and flat planes, ancient impacts overlaid by newer ones, covered by dust of some kind." Full story here

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