Chinese Probe Buzzes Asteroid Toutatis

[Craig]

http://news.discovery.com/space/chinese-moon-probe-buzzes-asteroid-121214.html

 

The Chinese lunar orbiter Chang'e 2 has completed its flyby of asteroid Toutatis, a five-kilometer (three mile) long space rock that recently had a "close" encounter with Earth.

 

The probe, which completed its primary moon-mapping mission in 2011, was commanded to depart lunar orbit in June 2011 and travel to the Earth-sun L2 point -- a region of gravitational stability, approximately 1.5 million kilometers away in the opposite direction of the sun.

 

[Guest Steve]

There's a video of it here based on the radar pictures:

 

http://phys.org/news/2012-12-asteroid-toutatis-slowly-earth.html

 

I think it needs the Jaws theme tune playing...