Comet-Chasing Spacecraft Encounters Rare Asteroid

Riding with Robots writes "Yesterday the robotic spacecraft Rosetta, on its way to a distant encounter with Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, flew by the asteroid 'Steins,' which is roughly 4.6 kilometers wide. Steins is one of the relatively rare E-type asteroids. The mission team live-blogged throughout the day, and a press conference with the first pictures will be available soon." Rosetta's flyby took it to within 800 kilometers of Steins while both objects were roughly 360 million kilometers from Earth. According to Rosetta's fact sheet (PDF), the craft will next swing by Earth in 2009 and take a look at another asteroid in 2010 on its way to the rendezvous with the comet in 2014.

Comments

Re:Relatively rare?

[cp.tar]

Not that I know anything about them, but the asteroids inward of the main belt seem to be a minority, compared to all the other asteroids in the main belt and beyond it. A majority of that subset can still be a relative minority.
Insert voter population analogy here.