HAMO, (aka High Altitude Mapping Orbit) |
HAMO, (aka High Altitude Mapping Orbit) |
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#1
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Solar System Cartographer ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 10173 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 ![]() |
According to Dawn (who ought to know) the descent to the next mapping orbit is beginning now.
"NASA_Dawn NASA's Dawn Mission I'm done with Survey science operations today!! Time for a several-week transfer down to High Altitude Mapping Orbit (HAMO)!! 20 hours ago" Better pics on the way! Thanks, Dawn team, for the pictures so far. Will we learn of any preliminary nomenclature soon? Phil -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke Maps for download (free PD: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Cartography.pdf NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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#2
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![]() Member ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 214 Joined: 30-December 05 Member No.: 628 ![]() |
Indeed, Vesta's midsection does look as if it has been worked on a lathe. But the rotational axis on an actual lathe is maintained by a mechanically rigid piece of machinery. For a pair of free-spinning celestial bodies, it is hard to see how they could maintain just the right distance for several revolutions so to gouge out the grooves without bouncing off, melting, breaking up, merging, etc. The sort of light, plowing, contact that monty is considering is a pretty unstable situation. That said, I don't have a better idea to explain how the grooves got there. I assume some common cause must operate on vesta, phobos, lutezia, maybe even iapetus, but most of the contending stories have holes in them. Let's keep working on it.
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#3
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Junior Member ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 22 Joined: 8-March 10 Member No.: 5252 ![]() |
I don't have a better idea to explain how the grooves got there. I assume some common cause must operate on vesta, phobos, lutezia, maybe even iapetus, but most of the contending stories have holes in them. Let's keep working on it. If the grooves are not associated with the southern impact, though I find that hard to accept, and predate the modern surface, they must be very old, perhaps from it's formative period. The only mechanism I can propose for parallel grooves is the same one I raised in the case of Phobos viz, intersection with co-planar rings. If in it's formation, Vesta was in an elliptical orbit around a larger body with coplanar circular rings, it could have encountered planar rings edge-on at each periapsis. The global extent of these grooves would indicate that Vesta, unlike Phobos, was not tidally locked at the time. |
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