main-belt asteroid
Lutetia
A large, ancient main-belt asteroid named after the Roman name for Paris, imaged by ESA's Rosetta in 2010.
- Distance from Earth today
- 369.4 million km2.469 AU · light: 20 min 32 s
- Distance from the Sun today
- 311.1 million km2.079 AU
- As of
- 2 November 2026position from NASA/JPL orbital elements
Where it is today
Top view of the plane of Earth’s orbit, compressed distance scale. Open on the big map with the time slider →
Facts
- Diameter
- 98 km
- Dimensions
- 121 × 101 × 75 km
- Mass
- 1.70 × 10¹⁸ kg
- Density
- 3,400 kg/m³
- Rotation period
- 8.2 h
- Semi-major axis
- 2.435 AU (364.2 million km)
- Perihelion
- 2.033 AU
- Aphelion
- 2.836 AU
- Orbital period
- 3.80 years
- Orbital eccentricity
- 0.165
- Orbital inclination
- 3.1°
- Last perihelion
- 14 April 2023
- Next perihelion
- 30 January 2027
- Minimum orbit distance from Earth’s orbit (MOID)
- 1.024 AU (153.2 million km)
- Albedo
- 0.190
Source of the figures: JPL Small-Body Database (public domain).
Discovery: 1852 – Hermann Goldschmidt
Description
Lutetia was discovered in 1852 by Hermann Goldschmidt, a painter and amateur astronomer who observed from his home in Paris, and it carries the Latin name of the city. In July 2010 ESA's Rosetta flew past it on the way to comet 67P, making it one of the largest asteroids visited by a spacecraft at that time. The images showed an elongated body with an old, heavily cratered surface, landslides and a thick layer of regolith. Its high density and composition suggest it may be a primitive fragment left over from the earliest stages of planet formation.