(CNN) -- A spacecraft survived the closest encounter ever with a comet on Thursday, tracking it just 435 miles (700 kilometers) from the comet's nucleus.
Mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, broadcast live coverage of the event on NASA Television's Media Channel.
The asteroid zoomed by Earth at a perfectly safe distance of around 1.8 million miles (2.9 kilometers).
Engineers expect to lose contact with the private US moon lander Odysseus on Tuesday, cutting short the mission after its sideways touchdown last week.
NASA announced Tuesday that a $32.7 million Capstone spacecraft intended to try out a skewed lunar orbit had lost contact, but agency engineers are confident
we need to study that kind of space activity because 2012 is coming :D