News Archive: Page 181

The comet-bound Rosetta spacecraft will use its powerful instruments to see and sniff asteroid Lutetia Saturday, taking advantage of a fortuitous flyby of the perplexing object, which could be a chunk of primordial rock from the ancient solar system.

While NASA is counting on an act of Congress or a renegotiated deal with Russia to acquire plutonium for its next robotic deep space missions, the European Space Agency is considering alternative nuclear fuels to power its own probes traveling into the sun-starved outer solar system.

A European space probe has captured detailed images of an asteroid that scientists hope will increase understanding of how the solar system evolved.

Europe's Rosetta spacecraft flew less than 2,000 miles from asteroid Lutetia Saturday, snapping pictures of the new world and collecting bonus science on a primitive relic of the solar system.