- My Satellite Setup
- A little less analogue, and a lot more crap.
- My Location
- UK
An excellent achievement, the link below has images and a short video of the flyby.
BEIJING, Dec. 15 (Xinhua) -- China's space probe Chang'e-2 has successfully conducted a maneuver in which it flew by the asteroid Toutatis, about seven million km away from the Earth.
Travelling in deep space, Chang'e-2 made the flyby on Dec. 13 at 16:30:09 Beijing Time (08:30"09 GMT), the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) announced on Saturday.
The flyby was the first time an unmanned spacecraft launched from Earth has taken such a close viewing of the asteroid, named after a Celtic god.
It also made China the fourth country after the United States, the European Union and Japan to be able to examine an asteroid by spacecraft.
Chang'e-2 came as close as 3.2 km from Toutatis and took pictures of the asteroid at a relative velocity of 10.73 km per second, the SASTIND said in a statement.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2012/12141551-change-2-imaging-of-toutatis.html
BEIJING, Dec. 15 (Xinhua) -- China's space probe Chang'e-2 has successfully conducted a maneuver in which it flew by the asteroid Toutatis, about seven million km away from the Earth.
Travelling in deep space, Chang'e-2 made the flyby on Dec. 13 at 16:30:09 Beijing Time (08:30"09 GMT), the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) announced on Saturday.
The flyby was the first time an unmanned spacecraft launched from Earth has taken such a close viewing of the asteroid, named after a Celtic god.
It also made China the fourth country after the United States, the European Union and Japan to be able to examine an asteroid by spacecraft.
Chang'e-2 came as close as 3.2 km from Toutatis and took pictures of the asteroid at a relative velocity of 10.73 km per second, the SASTIND said in a statement.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2012/12141551-change-2-imaging-of-toutatis.html