- AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands.
Astronomists at the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona
raised the alarm on 7 november when they detected this bright light hurling
towards earth.
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- They believed that the bright dot represented a 'cosmic
planetoid with a circumference of about 20 metres, hurling straight towa
rds our planet.' They gave it the designation 2007-VN84 and estimated
that it would just barely miss earth on 13 november.
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- However when Denis Denisenko of the Russian Institute
for Space Research in Moscow noted from its published trajectory that
it had just closely passed by Mars at the end of February, it rang a bell.
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- He realised that this "cosmic rock' was following
the identical trajectory of the European Space Sonde Rosetta.
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- This little spacecraft with its bright solar panels is
scheduled to visit comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014 and is picking
up speed steadily by catapulting itself around Earth and Mars.
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- Next Tuesday, Rosetta will be catapulting itself for
a second time around earth, flying 5,000km above the Pacific Ocean at
a speed of 12,5 km/per .
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- Rosetta's third bypass around Earth will take place two
years from now.
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- Rosetta looks so bright because of her solar panels.
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- Dutch news report:
- http://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/article477377.ece/
Gevaarlijke_kosmische_steen_blijkt_ruimtesonde_Rosetta?source=rss?
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