Former astronaut Ed Lu, now with the B612 Foundation, will be on the CBS 60 Minutes news program this evening to talk about near earth asteroids and their threat to earth : Dr. Ed Lu on 60 MINUTES – B612 Foundation:
[ Update: See complete segment in the post above.]
Here is an excerpt:
Here’s an interesting account of tracking down images from the Russian Elektro-L weather satellite showing the trail of the fireball meteor that struck over Chelyabinsk last February: On space kindness and the Chelyabinsk meteor – The Planetary Society.
And here is a GIF animation of the meteor created from images made by the EUMETSAT Meteosat-10 geostationary satellite : Trails of Chelyabinsk viewed from space – The Planetary Society.
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Here is a sequence of beautiful full color images of earth produced by Elektro-L over January 2013:
The satellite images the earth every 30 minutes. Twice a year during an equinox, it captures an entire hemisphere in a single shot with no night terminator line in view.
A diverse array of unconnected items that have built up in my posting queue:
NASA;s Chief Technologist Mason Peck to attend Maker Faire to ask help of Makers “for ideas on how to find, track and deflect asteroids” as part of the agency’s Asteroid Initiative and Grand Challenge:
NASA Highlights Asteroid Grand Challenge at World Maker Faire
NASA is reaching out to a new community for ideas on how to find and track potentially hazardous asteroids, and protect the planet from their impacts. The World Maker Faire is being held Sept. 21-22 at the New York Hall of Science, 47-01 111th St., in New York.
The World Maker Faire is a festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness – the exact qualities NASA is looking for to help in solving the global challenge asteroid threats present.
NASA Chief Technologist Mason Peck will be on hand to talk about how Makers can help shape space exploration and be a critical player in NASA’s asteroid initiative.
“Unlike traditional NASA missions of exploration and science, this grand challenge is driven by the idea that protecting our planet is an issue bigger than any one program, mission or country,” Peck said. “For the first time, NASA has reached out to industry, academia, stakeholder organizations and private citizens for ideas on how to find, track and deflect asteroids. These partnerships represent a new way of doing business for NASA and a call to action for Makers: join us to become a critical part of the future of space exploration.”
NASA will offer Makers a chance to program science hardware and learn how small, do-it-yourself projects might be used to help track and understand asteroids, using their own personal computers. NASA also will showcase the Centennial Challenges Program, with winning teams and technology from the Astronaut Glove and Sample Robot Return challenges.
Media interested in attending Maker Faire should register online at: http://makerfaire.com
Media interested in speaking to Peck should contact Sarah Ramsey at sarah.ramsey@nasa.gov.
NASA’s asteroid initiative has two parts: the mission by astronauts to explore an asteroid and a grand challenge to protect the planet. It is included in President Obama’s fiscal year 2014 budget request for NASA, and leverages the agency’s progress on asteroid discovery and study, the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft and cutting-edge technology development.
For more information about NASA’s asteroid initiative, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative
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Here is a video of the Asteroid Grand Challenge announcement back in June:
The near earth object 3552 Don Quixote is found to be a comet rather than an asteroid:
Professor Helps to Discover Near-Earth Asteroid Is Really a Comet
– Tennessee Today
Some things are not always what they seem—even in space. For thirty years, scientists believed a large near-Earth object was an asteroid. Now, an international team including Joshua Emery, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences at UT, has discovered it is actually a comet.
Called 3552 Don Quixote, the body is the third largest near-Earth object—mostly rocky bodies, or asteroids, that orbit the Sun in the vicinity of Earth. About 5 percent of near-Earth objects are thought to be “dead” comets that have shed all the water and carbon dioxide in the form of ice that give them their coma—a cloud surrounding the comet nucleus—and tail.
This image displays Don Quixote’s orbit.
The team found that Don Quixote is neither. It is, in fact, an active comet, thus likely containing water ice and not just rocks. The finding will be presented at the European Planetary Science Congress 2013 in London today, Sept. 10. The discovery could hold implications for the origin of water on Earth.
“Don Quixote has always been recognized as an oddball,” said Emery. “Its orbit brings it close to Earth, but also takes it way out past Jupiter. Such a vast orbit is similar to a comet’s, not an asteroid’s, which tend to be more circular—so people thought it was one that had shed all its ice deposits.”
Using the Spitzer Space Telescope operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology under contract with NASA, the team—led by Michael Mommert of Northern Arizona University—reexamined images of Don Quixote from 2009 when it was in the part of its orbit closest to the Sun, and found it had a coma and a faint tail.
Emery also reexamined images from 2004, when it was at its farthest distance from the sun, and determined that the surface is composed of silicate dust, which is similar to comet dust. He also determined that Don Quixote did not have a coma or tail at this distance, which is common for comets because they need the sun’s radiation to form the coma and the sun’s charged particles to form the tail. The researchers also confirmed Don Quixote’s size and the low, comet-like reflectivity of its surface.
“The power of the Spitzer telescope allowed us to spot the coma and tail, which was not possible using optical telescopes on the ground,” said Emery. “We now think this body contains a lot of ice, including carbon dioxide and/or carbon monoxide ice, rather than just being rocky.”
This discovery implies that carbon dioxide and water ice might be present within other near-Earth asteroids, as well. It also may have implications for the origins of water on Earth as comets may be the source of at least some of it, and the amount on Don Quixote represents about 100 billion tons of water—roughly the same amount that can be found in Lake Tahoe.
The project was funded by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope project and the German Research Foundation. Co-authors are Joseph Hora and Howard Smith, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Alan Harris, German Aerospace Center; William Reach, Universities Space Research Association; Cristina Thomas, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Michael Mueller, Space Research Organization Netherlands ; Dale Cruikshank, NASA Ames Research Center; David Trilling, Northern Arizona University; and Marco Delbo’, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur.