In my role as Senior Editor for Space Science at the European Space Agency, I was lucky enough to be in ESA mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, to witness the flyby of asteroid Lutetia by the spacecraft Rosetta. The flyby was a complete success, returning the most amazing images. You can see the official web story I wrote about it that night in the 10 July 2010 entry. It generated so much interest that I found myself in great demand afterwards to write and speak about the experience. For each re-telling of the story, I endeavoured to include new information to make each piece unique. This is the article I wrote for The Guardian.

 
“Images from the Rosetta spacecraft's weekend flyby of the asteroid Lutetia reveal its violent past. Asteroid Lutetia has been revealed as an irregular chunk of battered rock by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft.

 
Rosetta approached to within 3,162km of the enigmatic asteroid at 18:10 CEST (Central European Summer Time) on Saturday and returned the first close-up pictures soon afterwards, each image taking around 15-20 minutes to download. ... “

 
Read the full story here.