Rosetta spacecraft takes asteroid photos

PARIS, Sept. 6 (UPI) -- The Rosetta spacecraft has captured images of an asteroid in orbit more than 220 million miles from Earth, a European Space Agency official says.

ESA principal investigator Professor Uwe Keller said the images taken of the diamond-shaped asteroid known as Steins offers a rare glimpse into objects in outer space, The Daily Telegraph reported Saturday.

"There is also a chain of seven craters that we would not expect to see on such a small body," Keller said.

"We normally see craters like this on moons like our own. We have to look at why they are there, but clearly Steins has a complex collision history. The color of Steins is essentially gray but it is a little bit reddish. It is also larger than we expected."

Rosetta will try to land on the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko sometime in 2015 in an attempt to study the celestial object's chemistry, the Telegraph said.

The British newspaper said the closest images of a comet came in 2005 when NASA struck one with a rocket as part of a Deep Impact spacecraft mission.