Zou Xiaoduan^a,b, Li Chunlai^a,*, Liu Jianjun^a, Wang Wenrui^a, Li Han^a, Ping Jinsong^a

^aKey Laboratory of Lunar and Deep Space Exploration, National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, A20 Datun Road, Chaoyang, Beijing 100012, China
^bUniversity of Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 19A Yuquan Road, Beijing 100049, China

On 2012 December, 13, 08:30 (UTC), Chang’E-2 flew by asteroid 4179 Toutatis in deep space seven million kilometers away from Earth. The flyby mission returned clear optical images of Toutatis for the first time. The flyby distance and image pixel scale were calculated from the image size of the asteroid compared to a predicted view of an earlier radar shape model. We compared the similarities and differences in both the radar model and the CE-2 photo mosaic, and measured the craters and lumps on the surface of Toutatis. We preliminarily analyzed the topography of the Toutatis surface. We found that the density of craters on the small lobe is less than that on the big lobe.

Reference
Xiaoduan Z, Chunlai L, Jianjun L, Wenrui W, Han L and Jinsong P (in press) The Preliminary Analysis of the 4179 Toutatis Snapshots of the Chang’E-2 Flyby. Icarus
[doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2013.11.002]
Copyright Elsevier

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