The European Space Agency took the closest look yet Saturday at asteroid Lutetia in an extraordinary quest some 280 million miles in outer space between Mars and Jupiter. 
 
 Spacecraft Operations Manager Andrea Accomazzo controls the Rosetta asteroid mission at the Space Operations Centre of ESA (European Space Agency) in Darmstadt, Germany, on Saturday, July 10, 2010. ESA's... (Associated Press) 
 
 Spacecraft Operations Manager Andrea Accomazzo controls the Rosetta asteroid mission at the Space Operations Centre of ESA (European Space Agency) in Darmstadt, Germany, on Saturday, July 10, 2010. ESA's... (Associated Press) 
 
 The comet-chaser Rosetta flew by Lutetia as close as 1,900 miles (3,200 kilometers) and had about two hours to capture images of the asteroid with its high-tech cameras, the space agency said in Darmstadt, Germany. 
 
 Though Lutetia was discovered some 150 years ago, for a long time it was little more than a point of light to those on Earth. Only recent high-resolution ground-based imaging has given a vague view of the asteroid, the agency said. 
 
 "At the moment we know very little about it," project scientist Rita Schulz said in a webcast presentation from Darmstadt. 
 
 Lutetia is believed to be 83.3 miles (134 kilometers) in diameter with a "pronounced elongation," but scientists have been puzzled as to what type of asteroid it is _ a "primitive" one containing carbon compounds or a metallic asteroid. 
 
 "We are now going to get the details of this asteroid, which is very important," Schulz said. "There will be a lot of science coming from that mission." 
 
 Scientists hope to find in the information and images gathered by Rosetta clues to the history of comets and asteroids and of the solar system, Schulz said. 
 
 For Rosetta, examining Lutetia and other asteroids is only an event on its long journey to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko _ the mission's, said project manager Gerhard Schwehm. 
 
 Rosetta was launched in 2004 and is expected to reach its target in 2014. 
 
 Though the wait is long, scientists are certain it is going to be worthwhile, Schwehm said. 
 
 "We want to study the material out of which the planets formed," he said. This is possible only close up, he said. 

 Europe's Rosetta space probe has flown past the Asteroid Lutetia, returning a stream of scientific data for analysis. 
 
 The rock - some 120km (75 miles) in its longest dimension - is the biggest asteroid yet visited by a satellite. 
 
 Pictures showed Lutetia to be quite irregular in shape, its surface marked by a number of wide impact craters and even some intriguing grooves. 
 
 Rosetta's encounter with the asteroid occurred some 454 million km from Earth, beyond the orbit of Mars. 
 
 "It's a new world discovered by Rosetta and it will keep scientists busy for years," said Holger Sierks, the principal investigator on the Osiris camera system which acquired the images on this page. 
 
 "The pictures are majestic; they take my breath away," Professor David Southwood, the European Space Agency's director of science, told BBC News. 
 
 "It is an historic day, Europe once again proving it can do major steps in Solar System exploration. Everything worked like clockwork. It really was picture perfect," he said. 
 
 Scientists hope the data can help them determine Lutetia's true nature. Earth-based telescopes have had great difficulty in classifying the rock. 
 
 Some observations had suggested it was a very primitive body, little changed since its formation (a so-called C-type asteroid). 
 
 Other measurements, though, had spied what appeared to be metals in its surface, indicating the rock might have undergone a greater degree of evolution (M-type asteroid). 
 
 Lutetia could even be the fragmented remains of a much larger asteroid smashed apart in a great collision. 
 
 Nearly all of the Rosetta mission's instruments were switched on for a period of several hours around closest approach (1544 GMT; 1644 BST; 1744 CEST on Saturday). 
 
 ASTEROID 21 LUTETIA Continue reading the main story It was discovered in 1852 by Hermann Goldschmidt in Paris 
 
 Lutetia was the name of a pre-Roman town on the site of Paris 
 
 The designation "21" refers to the order of asteroid discoveries Read Esa's Rosetta blog Dawn - Nasa's asteroid probe 
 
 Multi-wavelength cameras and spectrometers, magnetic field and plasma experiments, dust instruments, a radio science experiment - all were tasked with gathering as much information as possible as the spacecraft whizzed by at the relative speed of 15km/s (9 miles/s) and a minimum distance of 3,162km (1,964 miles). 
 
 "It has an interesting surface and from the look of it, I would say it is more of a C-type asteroid - but we can't really say anything yet," said Dr Rita Schulz, the Rosetta project scientist. 
 
 "We must wait for the infrared data. This will be the key I think in understanding this asteroid," she told BBC News. 
 
 About 400 images were obtained during the pass, and with each picture taking about 10 minutes to come down it will be some days, if not weeks, before all the data from the flyby is transferred Earth. 
 
 Science teams expect to make public their preliminary findings at the Europlanet conference in Rome, Italy, in late September. 
 
 THE ROSETTA PROBE MAKES ITS CLOSE PASS OF ASTEROID LUTETIA Asteroids are the ancient remnants left over from the formation of the Solar System Most are made of rock, but some are also composed of metal, mostly nickel and iron Their sizes range from small boulders to objects that are hundreds of km in diameter Most asteroids reside in the vast region of space that exists between Mars and Jupiter 
 
 Before this flyby, the largest asteroid encountered by a spacecraft was Mathilde, which is a little over 50km (30 miles) wide. 
 
 Mathilde was visited by the US space agency's (Nasa) Near-Shoemaker probe in 1997. 
 
 Rosetta itself has already made one close asteroid flyby, of the Steins rock in 2008. 
 
 With this latest pass complete, Rosetta is now heading out to its meeting with the Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, set for the May of 2014. 
 
 The probe will go into orbit around the 4km-wide ball of ice and dust and even place a small lander called Philae on its surface. 
 
 Asteroids are the object of keen interest currently. The Japanese Hayabusa mission has recently returned from the Itokawa space rock, and next year the US Dawn mission will go into orbit around Asteroid Vesta. 
 
 The American President Barack Obama says Nasa should also have the goal of trying to send astronauts to an asteroid sometime in the 2020s.
– The European Space Agency is pulling off a nifty feat 280 million miles from home. Its comet-chasing space probe Rosetta is making a flyby of the biggest asteroid ever visited by a spacecraft, reports the BBC. Rosetta will be sending back photos of Lutetia, which was first spotted 150 years ago between Mars and Jupiter but remains a relative mystery. "At the moment we know very little about it," said one project scientist. "We are now going to get the details of this asteroid, which is very important—there will be a lot of science coming from that mission." After this, Rosetta will continue on toward its main target, the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, notes AP. It's got another 4 years of flying to get there.