ESA spacecraft completes flyby of Steins asteroid

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A deep space probe launched by the European Space Agency successfully has completed a flyby of an asteroid millions of miles from earth. Rosetta rendezvoused with the Steins asteroid, also known as Asteroid 2867 - currently in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter - just after 8:45 p.m. Friday at a distance of just less than 805 kilometers. As planned, the spacecraft lost signal for about an hour and a half, as engineers turned it away from the sun and because the craft was moving too fast for its antennae to transmit any signal. At around 10:14 p.m, the craft resumed signal transmission to the cheers of ESA engineers and technicians. "We're extremely happy that it worked," said the mission's manager Gerhard Schwehm, sipping a glass of champagne after the announcement from the control room. "It's a big relief. People can relax a bit now and everything seems fine."