PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109.  TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011

PHOTO CAPTION               TOP                   P-41525

These are radar images of asteroid 4179 Toutatis made during
the object's recent close approach to Earth. The images reveal
two irregularly shaped, cratered objects about 4 and 2.5
kilometers in average diameter which are probably in contact
with each other. The four frames shown here were obtained on
Dec. 8, 9, 10 and 13, 1992 when Toutatis was an average of
about 4 million kilometers from Earth. The time required to
obtain each of these images was 55, 14, 37 and 85 min.
respectively. On each day, the asteroid was in a different
orientation with respect to Earth. In these images, the radar
illumination comes from the top of the page, so parts of each
component facing toward the bottom are not seen. The large
crater shown in the Dec. 9 image (second from the top) is
about 700 meters in diameter. The radar observations were
carried out at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex
in California's Mojave desert by a team led by Dr. Steven Ostro
of JPL. for most of the work, a 400,000 watt coded radio
transmission was beamed at Toutatis from the Goldstone main
70-meter antenna. The echoes, which took as little as 24 seconds
to travel to Toutatis and back, were received by the new
34-meter antenna and relayed back to the 70-meter station where
they were decoded and processed into images.

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