Less than three weeks following the discovery of a similar meteorite, Discovery has come upon another - this one dubbed "Shelter Island."
Related, Scientific American is running a series of stories of the robotic exploration of the solar system and its future that might interest you.
Wayne
Just posted at the NASA Photojournal new images page, Opportunity is taking a look at this object, perhaps a meteorite. Click to enlarge.
Wayne
Credit: NASA/JPL
Finishing a conference in Italy on outer solar system and deep space exploration, Paul Gilster reports on one of the many papers he pledges to blog about in the future - using near Earth objects (NEOs), asteroids in this case, as convenient transfer points:
"The idea here is that the astronauts can use the NEO as a radiation shield, digging in to its surface and exploiting its resources on the way to the red planet. Greg presented a table showing candidate objects that could fill the bill, including two — 1999YR14 and 2007EE26 — that have one Earth-Mars transit time
amounting to one year or less."
See the entire post at the highly recommended blog Centauri Dreams.
Reading Paul's entry, my mind immediately wandered to the mission to the moon Phobos, which may or may not be an asteroid captured by Mars, and the Rosetta mission to orbit and land on Comet 67 P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. Rosetta has already flown past the asteroid 2867-Steins (video is available on YouTube) and will encounter 21-Lutetia at roughly this time next year.
And the artist's image of the lander, Philae, lashed to the comet (above) has to be one of my favorite space images ever. Click to enlarge.
Now for a bit of housekeeping: Kentucky Space blog will be on hold for the next week as I spend some time away from the computer monitor on vacation with my family. See you a bit later.
Wayne
Credits: ESA, image by AOES Medialab
This image of NASA testing the chute that will lower the Mars Science Laboratory through the planet's atmosphere, and nearly to the surface, was a Tuesday pic of the day.
Wayne
Image Credit: NASA/Ames Research Center/JPL
Robert Z, Space Flight Laboratory, University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, is up.
Programs include MOST, an astronomy satellite, the CanX series, and NTS - nanosat tracking of ships. NTS is passively magnetically stabilized.
MOST fixes on starts to gauge characteristics of the stars. It's pointing capability is impressive. Now imaging about 30 stars at a time.
CanX2 is a 3U with propulsion system experiment - it's not designed to change orbit.
He describesthe launch campaign, which uses Indian PLLV-C9. Space Flight Laboratory can act a flight facilitator and he invites other flyers. As for ITAR, if Canada sends technology to the states, restrictions are much less onerous.
He points out that XPOD and PPOD will accept any standard CubeSat.
Their sats employ S-band and UHF ground stations. The S-band is networked to other locations.
CanX-2 and CanX-6 are one month away from one year anniversary on orbit.
Nanosat space astronomy mission, BRight Target Explorer (CanX-3) uses nanosatellite star tracker developed in Canada to contribute to BRITE is only 6Kg. MOST is 53Kg.
CanX 4 and 5 will employ formation flying, which could enable stereo imaging, among other technical achievements. They will employ intersatellite communications and three axis attitude control. The bus developed for multi-missions is very versatile.
Have looked at generic nanosatellite missions to the moon and Mars.
Commercial future for these sats? Work left in miniaturization and power reduction technology. De-orbiting requirement, efficient propulsion systems needed.
Flight Laboratory, Funding comes from sixty percent foreign. No funding from university itself. That's it.
Wayne
The Dawn fly-by of Mars went very well, and the craft snapped a nice picture on closest approach. Dawn is on its way to a rendezvous of Vesta and Ceres, two large protoplanets in our solar system, on 2011 and 2015, respectively. These two bodies have been around for a very long time and studying them will give scientists a peek into the earliest period of our solar system. NASA:
Dawn's science instrument suite will measure shape, surface topography, tectonic history, elemental and mineral composition, and will seek out water-bearing minerals. In addition, the Dawn spacecraft itself and how it orbits both Vesta and Ceres will be used to measure the celestial bodies' masses and gravity fields.
The craft should also return some terrific visual images.
Wayne
Image credit: William K. Hartmann Courtesy of UCLA
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