21 August 2018
A ginger-root-shaped asteroid named Toutatis, which poses a potential threat to earth, might have formed from the merger of two smaller asteroids, say researchers from China and the United States. China's second lunar probe, Chang'e-2, rendezvoused with Toutatis on 13 December 2012, at a distance of 770 meters with a relative velocity of 10.73 km per second. It was the world's first close fly-by observation of Toutatis. The probe took high-resolution images providing a number of discoveries.
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