Hubble's images of asteroid Vesta will aid NASA mission

[News_Editor]

Hubble's images of asteroid Vesta will aid NASA mission

2010-10-09 03:40:53 GMT+7 (ICT)

WASHINGTON D.C. (BNO NEWS) – The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Friday announced that its Hubble Space Telescope captured images of asteroid Vesta that will aid NASA's Dawn mission.

NASA's Dawn mission was launched in September 2007 and the Dawn spacecraft is planned to rendezvous with Vesta in July 2011. Scientists created a video with the Hubble's images in order to improve pointing instructions for the spacecraft that is currently in polar orbit around the asteroid.

Analyses of Hubble images revealed a pole orientation, or tilt, of approximately four degrees more to the asteroid's east than scientists previously thought. This means that the season changes between south and north of Vesta are about a month later than scientists believed.

This discovery is significant for NASA as the sunlight expected to illuminate the asteroid changed; Dawn spacecraft needs solar light for imaging and some mapping activities. Vesta is the brightest asteroid in the solar system and was discovered approximately 200 years ago.

"The new Hubble images give Dawn scientists a better sense of how Vesta is spinning because our new views are 90 degrees different from our previous images. It's like having a street-level view and adding a view from an airplane overhead," said Jian-Yang Li, a scientist of the Dawn mission.

Dawn will leave Vesta in 2015 in order to reach the dwarf planet Ceres, approximately 134 million miles away. Vesta and Ceres are the most massive objects in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists study them as examples of the building blocks of terrestrial planets like Earth.

"We planned this mission to accommodate our imprecise knowledge of Vesta. Ours is a journey of discovery and, with our ability to adapt, we are looking forward to collecting excellent science data at our target," said Bob Mase, Dawn's project manager.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2010-10-09

[Goshawk]

its all prep / recon work for asteroid 1999 RQ36 that is going to smash into the Earth & wreak global havoc..... in 172 years

at least, that is the one that has been made public.. i suspect a sooner likely devasting collision is probably known to some 'others' but for fear of mass panic... ?

story here

video here

sleep tight...!

[cloudhopper]

I guess it doesn't take a very big tin foil hat to cover that brain.

A recent dynamical study by Andrea Milani and collaborators has located a series of eight potential Earth impacts between 2169 and2199. The cumulative probability of impact is dependent on poorly known physical properties of the object, but is not higher than 0.07% for all eight encounters.

[Goshawk]

I guess it doesn't take a very big tin foil hat to cover that brain.

i guess something a little tougher than tin foil would be better on anyones head when this happens..

edit: nice wikipedia copy/paste job by the way cloudhopper..

Edited October 9, 2010 by Goshawk

[Tigs]

I guess it doesn't take a very big tin foil hat to cover that brain.

A recent dynamical study by Andrea Milani and collaborators has located a series of eight potential Earth impacts between 2169 and2199. The cumulative probability of impact is dependent on poorly known physical properties of the object, but is not higher than 0.07% for all eight encounters.

Cloudhopper

What a cheap skate! At least if you are going to insult someone by suggesting they should be wearing tin foil hats (which they shouldn't, but you will find that out when you take your head out of the bucket of sand), then have the common courtesy when your whole post consists of a cut and paste job to just say where the quote was from, rather than implying it originated from you The quote comes complete with the non word 'Dynamical' rather than 'Dynamic'

In terms of inter steller stuff, Goshawk is on the money, as odds of 1000 to 1 are very very small indeed. These odds indicate that there is a massive possibility of an impact. With the speeds and times involved, it only needs a miscalculation akin to a gnats widger, and an asteroid calculated to pass us by 150 000 miles will be knocking on somebodies door and wiping out more lives than every manmade conflict in the history of the planet. Perhaps the asteroid may be pure ferrous material (unless a probe is sent near bye, determining its composition is very difficult), in which case rather than just missing us it may find the Earth to 'attractive' to resist! Either way the threat of the next mass extinction event is not 'if' but 'when', as it will happen, so stop worrying about tinfoil hats and just worry about getting your head out of the sand, as if there is a chance of survival, it will be the people who have there head firmly out of the sand that will have the most likely chance of continuing their gene pool.

This post has been completed without reference to wikipedia or catastrophemonitor.com

Edited October 9, 2010 by Tigs

[Goshawk]

This post has been completed without reference to wikipedia or catastrophemonitor.com

he he.. too many people rely on wiki as 'their own voice' on many forums.. over the years i've found thaivisa is no exception.

careful Tigs, he may banish you to the tin foil brigade too...

[Tigs]

This post has been completed without reference to wikipedia or catastrophemonitor.com

he he.. too many people rely on wiki as 'their own voice' on many forums.. over the years i've found thaivisa is no exception.

careful Tigs, he may banish you to the tin foil brigade too...

No snags! I find them rather fetching attire for wear in the evenings I might start wearing one for when I am on TV, in order to stop some of the sites more infamous trolls and mentally unstable posters sucking my brains out, as they endeavour to do with regular monotony.

Edited October 9, 2010 by Tigs

[Goshawk]

I find them rather fetching attire for wear in the evenings

agree.. and i always ensure that my dog is wearing his before we embark on the nightly walk too..

you can't be too careful..

[cloudhopper]

I guess it doesn't take a very big tin foil hat to cover that brain.

A recent dynamical study by Andrea Milani and collaborators has located a series of eight potential Earth impacts between 2169 and2199. The cumulative probability of impact is dependent on poorly known physical properties of the object, but is not higher than 0.07% for all eight encounters.

Cloudhopper

What a cheap skate! At least if you are going to insult someone by suggesting they should be wearing tin foil hats (which they shouldn't, but you will find that out when you take your head out of the bucket of sand), then have the common courtesy when your whole post consists of a cut and paste job to just say where the quote was from, rather than implying it originated from you The quote comes complete with the non word 'Dynamical' rather than 'Dynamic'

In terms of inter steller stuff, Goshawk is on the money, as odds of 1000 to 1 are very very small indeed. These odds indicate that there is a massive possibility of an impact. With the speeds and times involved, it only needs a miscalculation akin to a gnats widger, and an asteroid calculated to pass us by 150 000 miles will be knocking on somebodies door and wiping out more lives than every manmade conflict in the history of the planet. Perhaps the asteroid may be pure ferrous material (unless a probe is sent near bye, determining its composition is very difficult), in which case rather than just missing us it may find the Earth to 'attractive' to resist! Either way the threat of the next mass extinction event is not 'if' but 'when', as it will happen, so stop worrying about tinfoil hats and just worry about getting your head out of the sand, as if there is a chance of survival, it will be the people who have there head firmly out of the sand that will have the most likely chance of continuing their gene pool.

This post has been completed without reference to wikipedia or catastrophemonitor.com

Please accept my apologies for the insult and lack of attribution then. I assumed that since I quoted a study by someone else that it would be obvious that the current estimate of 0.07% chance of an impact 172 years from now did not come from me. That those are massive odds that deserve worry by TV readers to the extent that they should lose sleep or that a similar impact is known to be coming even sooner but that information is being withheld from the public in order to preclude mass panic is nothing but ignorant fear mongering IMO. BTW I saw no attribution for the picture depicting an impact by an object apparently a thousand times larger than the one under discussion so I guess we should assume that Goshawk imaged it himself.

Edited October 10, 2010 by cloudhopper