OrbitalMap a live chronicle of orbit

In the Solar System

Mathilde

A dark, carbon-rich asteroid, here because NEAR Shoemaker flew past it in June 1997 on the way to Eros. It turns once every 17 days, which is extraordinarily slow, and it carries craters nearly as wide as it is without having come apart - the explanation is that it is barely held together in the first place, about half empty space, and absorbs an impact instead of transmitting it.

Radius
26 km

Open this on the live map

Everything the map shows is worked out in your browser from published orbital data - nothing on it is a stored picture of where things were.