The short clip is the result of years of hard work

Jun 26, 2012 13:38 GMT  ·  By

Named after the stone that allowed experts to crack the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Rosetta spacecraft was launched on March 2, 2004, on a rendezvous course with comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. En route, it carried out a flyby of asteroid 21 Lutetia, producing a remarkable video.

The short clip is made up of images taken before, during and after July 10, 2010, when the vehicle reached its point of closest approach to the large asteroid. Thanks to the images collected with its narrow-angle cameras, the European Space Agency's spacecraft managed to reveal the rock's history.

According to ESA scientists, Lutetia is one of the oldest objects in the solar system. Most likely, it formed before the planets started to crystallize, and it could be classified as a protoplanet. Some believe that the asteroid features a metal core, like the rocky planets of the inner solar system do.

The video (which can be found here) is composed of images collected from up to 500,000 kilometers away. At closest approach between Lutetia and Rosetta, the two were 3,162 kilometers (1,965 miles) away from each other.