Two ESA Craft To Observe Asteroid 21 Lutetia

japan_dan writes "Two ESA spacecraft will observe 21 Lutetia during Rosetta's flyby on 10 July: Rosetta from 3,160 km and Herschel from 450 million km. Herschel's PACS and SPIRE spectrometers will view Lutetia in far infrared, while Rosetta will gather data in a variety of wavelengths. Since the observations will be coordinated during and at closest approach, scientists will later be able to correlate the data to produce a map of the thermal radiation emitted by Lutetia. There are a pair of animations modelling the expected temperature distribution over Lutetia at the link. The joint observations are part of a series of 8 sessions planned in the next couple of years by Herschel scientists to study objects that will be visited by spacecraft."

Comments

21 eh?

[thijsh]

I would love to see those sweet pictures...

android 2.1

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody who read android 2.1 instead of asteroid 21, stand up.

it's a miracle!

[Thud457]

fuckin' magnets, how do they work?

Re:Asteroid as candidates for commodities

[Svippy]

I spotted a post on Slashdot a couple of weeks ago which pointed out a couple of advantages of exploring the asteroid belt as a rich source of minerals and possible mining. On this strength of that brief but well worded comment I did some research myself and right now I'm currently reading the only book I could find that seemed accessible enough to a person with limited knowledge of space mining and the possibilities therein: (Mining the Sky by John S. Lewi).

Fry: Wow! Mining a comet! That sounds fun.

Farnsworth: Yes, there's no safer occupation than mining. Especially when you're perched on a snowball whipping through space at a million miles an hour. [He mimes a snowball whipping through space at a million miles an hour.] Safe!