BBC: The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft, launched in 2004 to study the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko when it places a lander there in 2014, caught the first-ever images of the asteroid Lutetia 450 million kilometers from Earth. On Saturday, from a distance of 3000 km, Rosetta revealed Lutetia to be lumpy and potato-like in appearance. About two hours of data transmission and pictures were beamed back to Earth. The observations will be valuable to asteroid science, and will be applicable to other asteroids besides Lutetia.
