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Real "asteroid drill"
Hello All,
Here (see: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/A...ercise_999.html and http://iawn.net/frequently-asked-questions/ ) are the results of the first real international “asteroid encounter drill” that was recently conducted, when asteroid 2012 TC4 passed only about 27,200 miles (43,780 kilometers) above the Earth on October 12th. ALSO: The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is evaluating and moving to test, aboard a CubeSat space probe to a short-period comet, a coin-size microbolometer camera (see: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/N...oids_999.h tml ) to both characterize comets via their infrared-measured temperatures *and* (as part of a different but associated project) to characterize asteroids on collision courses with Earth—and to serve as a terminal guidance sensor for an asteroid-deflecting or comet-deflecting impactor spacecraft (a vehicle of the DART type, see: http://www.google.com/search?source...1.0.pUAzo4SUHRw ). I hope this information will be helpful.
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Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185 http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050 http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511 All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com. NAR #54895 SR |
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Speaking of asteroids and comets, today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a nice shot of Comet 67P by the Rosetta spacecraft.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/17...osetta_2048.jpg
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I love sanding. |
#3
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Quote:
We need to visit more comets, for purely scientific, planetary defense, and resource assaying reasons (some asteroids with eccentric orbits are actually extinct comets). As David Portree and others have documented (see: http://www.google.com/search?source...0.jEdTLF 455xU ), there have been numerous proposals for comet missions, including multiple-target flyby and slow flyby missions (electrical propulsion makes rendezvous missions practical, although flyby missions can examine multiple comets--and asteroids--to gather less detailed "population characteristics" data on several targets). Also: As Rosetta demonstrated, station keeping maneuvers, "polyhedron orbits" (that is, three-dimensional, "propulsive turn" orbits [Rosetta flew pyramid orbits around Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko's nucleus]), and proximity operations at comet nuclei are very easy, due to comets' negligible gravity. Some comets, such as Giacobini-Zinner ("GZ," the first comet ever to be visited, by the re-purposed ISEE-3 [re-named ICE] spacecraft: http://www.google.com/search?ei=pH4...1.0.0wSZV_bhYLU ), have oddly-shaped, centrifugal force-stretched nuclei; Comet GZ's approximately 2 kilometer-wide nucleus is thought to perhaps be a rapidly-spinning, pancake shape, with an equatorial radius eight times that of the polar radius.
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Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185 http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050 http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511 All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com. NAR #54895 SR Last edited by blackshire : 11-07-2017 at 06:48 AM. |
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