Mathilde is a C-type asteroid that was discovered by Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa at Vienna Observatory on 12 November 1885.  It has dimensions 66 × 48 × 46 km, and an orbit semi-major axis distance of 2.6484 AU and eccentricity of 0.265.  Mathilda has a notably slow rate of rotation, requiring 17.4 days to complete a 360° revolution about its axis.  Mathilde was visited by the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft during June 1997, on its way to asteroid 433 Eros, passing within about 1200 km of the asteroid at a relative speed of 9.93 km/s.

Manually created by RChen to complete mission NEAR

253 Mathilde

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission to the near-earth asteroid 433 Eros was launched in Feb. 1996 and carried out Eros orbital operations from Feb. 2000 through Feb. 2001.  It acquired the first comprehensive, spatially resolved measurements of the geomorphology, reflectance spectral properties, and shape of an asteroid, and X-ray and gamma-ray spectral measurements of elemental abundances from orbit and the surface. The ambient magnetic field in the vicinity of Eros was also measured.  On the way to Eros, the spacecraft also performed a flyby of the asteroid 253 Mathilde in June 1997, obtaining image data and a mass determination.

253 Mathilde Information Page

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